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H 

THE CONVALESCENTS 


BY 

CHARLES FREDERIC NIRDLINGER * 

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) 


York and London 

THE CENTURY CO. 



n 




Copyright, 1923, by j 
The Century Co. 


Printed in U. S. A. 


To 

H. M. N. 









CONTENTS 

CHAPTER page 

I A Musical Clinic at Doctor Hamp¬ 
den’s . 9 

II The City of Desperate Chances . . 22 

III Over the ’Phone. 37 

IV A Dance in the Valley of Shadows . 43 

V The Sphinx Shows Her Colors—and 

Her Ears .54 

VI The Eloquent Reticence of Two 

Ivory Sticks.69 

VII A Lesson in Sick-Room Deportment . 76 

VIH The Man Who Wouldn’t Wait on 

Broadway.90 

IX The Psychosis of Doughnuts at 

Midnight .loi 

X The Code of the Porch Club . . . 109 

XI The Facetiation of a Major Opera¬ 
tion .125 

XII The Way of a Maid with a Fahren¬ 
heit .134 

XIII The Blue-Gingham Tragedy . . . 146 

XIV The Magnificent Madness of Cap¬ 

tain Jim.153 

• • 

Vll 










CONTENTS 


PAGB 


CHAPTBR 

XV The Case of the Two Lilly^s—^and 

Some Others.162 

XVI A Clinic of Modes, Manners and 

Motives.174 

XVII A Dinner of Consequence . . . . 181 

XVIII On Bread-Pudding and Free Expres¬ 
sion .190 

XIX The Unsuspected Potency of Mrs. 

Huggins’ Ukulele.201 

XX The Swan-Song of “Big Kelly”: Ac¬ 
companist, Doctor Harley . . . 218 

XXI Spring in Tinicum Mews .... 231 

XXII The Imps of Mischance Take a 

Holiday.241 

XXIII The Great Strike.248 

XXIV A Phrase That Lost a Pulpit and 

Won a Wing.258 

XXV Four Thousand Miles by Taxi . . 268 

XXVI The End of the World.279 

. XXVII “When Galliard-Time and Measure- 

Time—”.296 

XXVIII Doctor Hampden Puts the Personal 

Note in a Professional Record . . 305 


Vlll 









THE CONVALESCENTS 


CHAPTER I 


A MUSICAL CLINIC AT DOCTOR 
HAMPDEN’S 


BOY walked into the waiting-room: a serious- 



jlIL looking boy who moved sedately, acknowl¬ 
edged almost sombrely the secretary’s address by 
his first name. Under one arm, and over one 
shoulder, he carried strapped bundles of school¬ 
books which he dropped silently in a corner, behind 
a chair. Then, with the slow deliberation of an 
aged man, he rubbed the wintry mist from his huge 
tortoise-shell goggles, nodded soberly to some of 
the patients and drawled into the hall. Through 
the open door, Cartell saw him dash up the stairs, 
two at a time. 

The next moment, a piano started, softly, ex¬ 
quisitely, Dinorah’s Shadow-Dance. Half-through, 
it swerved to a waltz—Andreefs Gatshine. A 
dozen bars of that, and brazenly, without warning, 
the piano went after “Minnie”—antic, marantic yet 
perennial “Minnie.” Drums—snare and base— 
summoned the posse. Chimes, bones, banjo, tam- 

9 


10 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


bourine and castanets took up the chase. Xylo¬ 
phone, trombone, whistles, cat-calls, saxophone, 
swelled the hue-and-cry. Up and down the key¬ 
board “Minnie” raced, the savage band at her 
heels; burst through the door—pervaded the house, 
tip-toe or hulla-balloo,—clamored to the roof— 
tumbled down the stairs—into the waiting-room and 
out again, back to the key-board—in a quivery, 
shivery frenzy of rhythm. The ceiling creaked and 
trembled the tempo. The crystal chandelier bobbed 
and jingled the riotous dance. Even that the pa¬ 
tients seemed not to notice; sat silent, motionless, 
expressionless; graved in fearsome thoughts—or, 
possibly, spell-bound by surprise. 

Cartell looked expectantly for some command of 
silence to the room above. But, no, the band played 
on; confident, ecstatic, frenetic, fortissimo. Doubt¬ 
less, he thought, the consulting-room is sound-proof. 
Or else the doctor’s power of concentration would 
defy a boiler-factory. 

He wondered if there might be method in the 
madness of the music; if it were planned, or at 
least sanctioned, to distract the anxious company 
from their gloom and fears. He had heard much 
of Doctor Hampden’s catholic mind and methods, 
the psychic quality of his understanding, the mystic 
solace of his personality. “Minnie” probably meant 
more than met the ear. 

And gradually the waiting patients gave color to 
the notion. 



THE CONVALESCENTS 11 

The secretary, absorbed In her work, appeared 
utterly oblivious of the rollicking, raffish tumult. 
But, presently, the type-keys were clicking In rhythm 
with the Jazz. An old man was swinging his stick, 
furtively, into a drum-major’s staff. A tiny baby, 
whose mother had been demanding ‘Still, Jan Ole, 
ban still!’ at frequent Intervals, changed Its cries 
to contented crows: kicked up Its heels and waved 
its hands and panted excitedly until Its mother felt 
called on to explain: “Jan Ole ban crazy by Jazz.” 
A grande-dame, of frigid mien, who for a while 
stared Icily at her magazine, must have warmed to 
the music; for she emerged, partly, from her dis¬ 
dain and her kolinsky pelisse—and jiggled her mesh- 
bag In unison. Whereupon a girl In kitten-fur jacket 
and a hat that was largely exotic vegetables topped 
by a dissipated pom-pom, winked at no one In par¬ 
ticular, and smiled at the universe—a kindly, sym¬ 
pathetic Saturday-to-Monday smile. 

It certainly was a jolly party—for a doctor’s 
office. 

A door Is heard to open, and the voice of a 
patient taking unwilling leave, with the wonted “Oh, 
iDoctor, one little thing more I forgot to tell you”— 
evidently something not so very little, or else so very 
complicated that it took prolonged and animated 
susurration for the telling which grew In candour 
and detail as It lagged toward the street-door, and 


12 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


promised to continue beyond in confidences to 
passers-by on the side-walk. 

Immediately the doctor’s door re-closes, the Lady- 
of-the-Pelisse rises, with plain intention to enter; 
but Miss Frewen looks up from the type-writer, 
shakes her head “No,” and nods to Jan Ole’s 
mother. Madame glares, moves her lips, as though 
to say: ‘Makes one sick!’ or, possibly, only ‘Bol¬ 
shevik!’ But no matter: Swenska takes the pas 
from kolinsky. 

The vegetable-patch turned to Cartell, after an 
uneasy survey of his evening-clothes showing be¬ 
neath a top-coat: “Are you-all waiting for the doc¬ 
tor?” 

“Yes, Miss.” 

“I wasn’t sure”—her eyes still sweeping his eve¬ 
ning clothes—“Thought maybe ’twas the party up¬ 
stairs—and I’ll miss my supper if I got to wait much 
longer.” 

The secretary re-assured her: 

“Your turn next—and then yours, Madame,” to 
the great lady. 

There you have it—^the ideal democracy—In the 
office of a great physician! Rich and poor—highest 
and lowest—palace and hovel—culture and igno¬ 
rance—alien and native—the banker’s lady, the 
huckster’s baby—alley-cat and sables—^meet as peers 
in a true republic. It Is Thomas Jefferson’s blessed 
idea in action; the finest caramel of communism: the 
soviet of science that Tolstoi dreamed and his 


THE CONVALESCENTS 13 

moujiks will realize in Time’s own time: the essence 
of socialism as Christ conceived it. 

The mantel-clock struck seven: then the quarter. 
Cartell decided to give up his errand—at least until 
tomorrow. . . . He’d be late at his dinner-engage¬ 
ment. . . . And Doctor Hampden wouldn’t see him 
now, anyway; past his office-hourS'—of persic pre¬ 
cision, report said and a wall-card hinted. . . . 
Besides, there was really no valid excuse for his 
coming here—no sense—^bothering a famous phy¬ 
sician—after office-hours—with imaginary ills. 
That’s all they were,—nerves, fag, nicotine. He’d 
been assured of that by men of science and his own 
Science. . . *. He’d never have thought of consult¬ 
ing Hampden, except that he happened to be coming 
over here—on much pleasanter business—and might 
just as well obtain his confirmation of Saxby and 
Craigie—and Williams: regularly his physician. 
The last, indeed, had suggested Hampden—“long 
as you’re going over there anyway. And after 
that, keep away from doctors. Or, eventually, 
you’ll convince one that you’re really ill.” 

But now—^the inquisition at hand—^what was there 
to tell? That he was feeling splendid? 

‘No pain—ache—symptoms?’ 

Nothing I 

‘Depression ?’ 

Contrary! Cheerful — buoyant — gay — thor¬ 
oughly enjoying the band-concert, up-stairs. 


14 THE CONVALESCENTS 

‘Then what the deuce you doing here—taking my 
time?’ 

Hampden, he’d heard, could be quite crusty on 
occasion. Yes, he’d make some excuse, to the sec¬ 
retary, and get out.—‘Would she please say to the 
doctor’—just then hilarious “Minnie” expired, of 
rhapsodic syncope. In a dazzling explosion of musi¬ 
cal Impudence. In the sudden stillness, stunning by 
contrast, the place became horribly sombre, as 
though mourning the recent demise. 

“Your turn next”—the secretary said. Cartell re¬ 
acting to the gloom, construed the words ominously. 

The room he entered was In darkness save for a 
hooded lamp above the desk. Its shaft of light fell 
upon a face lean, meagre, chiselled to cameo fine¬ 
ness. Instantly would recur to one the familiar print 
of the young Corsican—the petlt-caporal of the 13th 
Vendemlalre. The figure, trim, spare, alert, spar¬ 
tan, comported with the juvenile mask. The seem¬ 
ing youth of the man who rose to greet Cartell 
cheered and heartened him. Here Is one—he cajoled 
himself'—^whose decree need not be taken for final, 
despite his fame and authority. He’s quite too 
young to have the last word—unless It’s pleasant. 

Doctor Hampden heard, with the customary pro¬ 
fessional patience, the customary saturnalia of 
symptoms. Save for the customary Interjection of 
“H’m” or “Yes,” or “I see,” he suffered the cus¬ 
tomary Introspection and psycho-analysis and glar- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 15 

mg misuse of medical phraseology, which the phy¬ 
sician checked with a sudden:— 

“Changed your collar lately?” 

The question disconcerted, with hint of coal-dust 
from the train-journey, until the physician added: 
“Size, I mean.” 

He recorded the answer. Then followed the 
questions of convention: ‘Name—age—occupation 
—^weight’—and then- 

“What else do you know about yourself?” 

The patient offered some souvenirs of family 
history'- 

“No! Don’t want that. Treating you—not your 
grandmother.” 

He scrawled on a note-pad, scarcely taking his 
eyes from the patient. He threw in an occasional 
word of prompting or comment; his speech laconic, 
terse, seeming disjointed, but in reality dropping only 
needless words. His sentences were the man him¬ 
self: bone and sinew and muscle: nothing superfluous. 

A buzz interrupted—to his obvious annoyance. 

“Yes—at the ’phone.-—Cold? Send him over. 

. . . Your country-place? No—road snow-bound 
—take hour to motor out there. . . . O, yes, in my 
car! . . . Sniffles? Any cough?—Chill?—Tem¬ 
perature? . . . Only lot of sniffling. . . . Has he 
been out today? . . . Skating! . . . No, not 
slightest danger—no cough, chill, temperature. . . . 
Nurse?—No, no, doesn’t need nurse-—nothing—ex¬ 
cept his supper—and go to bed.—Silly thing—tele- 




i6 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


phone I Ethics all wrong!—Here I am trying to get 
history of the case ancl woman ’phones—from 
country—husband—just in from skating'—sniffling. 
Wants me come out—twenty miles—and bring 
trained-nurse—for a case of sniffles! Doesn’t occur 
to her that all he needs is handkerchiefs. . . . Still, 
she’s very young and just married.—You married?” 
he asked, resuming the record. 

“No.” 

“Ought to.” 

“Going to—this Spring.” 

“Right! World has no use for bachelors, since 
the war. They should be made to live alone.” 

“They’re supposed to, doctor.” 

“Yes, but I mean exiled^—by themselves—on an 
island. So the breed will die out.—You wired me, I 
believe, from New York?” 

“Yes, and you may care to know, perhaps, that in 
New York, before coming over here, I saw Dr. 
Saxby and Dr. Craigie. You know them?” 

“By reputation, of course. Not your—usual— 
advisers ?” 

“No. WiUiams—T. C.” 

“Had him long?” 

“Many years.” 

“H’m, h’m,” musingly. “What’s he say?” 

“Said I should see you—so long as this chance 
offered.” 

“H’m, h’m.” 

“But Saxby and Craigie,” he hurried on, “they 


THE CONVALESCENTS 17 

said I was perfectly all right; nothing to worry 
about.’* 

“Probably isn’t, if they said so. Great men, both. 
None better. Suppose you take your coat off and 
waistcoat.” 

“Won’t some other time do as well?” 

“Not for me,” Hampden retorted. “My hours 
are pretty well filled up. As for you, I can’t say till 
I’ve looked you over.” 

“It’s only that I’ve a dinner-engagement at seven- 
thirty,” Cartell explained. 

“So have I. We can both make it, if we don’t 
waste time.” And opening the door to the next room 
he placed a screen before it and called: 

“Miss Frewen—notes, please.” 

He spoke rapidly, with evident certainty, scarcely 
raising his voice. But to Cartell, comprehending, it 
thundered like the crack of doom. 

“The jig is up, isn’t it?” he asked, forcing a smile. 

“No, I wouldn’t say that. I can show you my 
record of a case almost identical”'—and he took 
from a cabinet a type-written folio and read it aloud; 
stressing some details, repeating some phrases, 
blazoning the triumphant climax. 

Cartell didn’t hear a word of it. 

He was trying to recall, eagerly, just what those 
others had told him—Saxby and Craigie—their tone 
and manner and look; and all the while, from above, 
came, absurdly, the strains of “Good-bye, Boys, I’m 


18 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Through,” the orchestra re-enforced now by an 
ocarina. 

“What did they mean—Saxby and Craigie,” he 
challenged, “when they told me I was all right?” 

“Both good men,” Hampden repeated; “no better 
anywhere.” 

“But you think they’re wrong, this time?” 

Hampden didn’t answer directly. “Just as I may 
be wrong,” he evaded; “I hope so. And I’m going 
to take you on Wednesday to Dr. Fenway. If he 
agrees with me, and advises that you take the 
chance-” 

“One in a hundred!” Cartell knew enough for 
that, and the physician objected only: 

“Fenway has won against greater odds—and 
worse going. ’Cause you’re in good shape, gen¬ 
erally.” 

“How long can I hold out, this way?” 

“Some months.” 

“How many—six or eight?” 

The physician hesitated a moment before he an¬ 
swered: 

“No—two or three.” 

“That will have to do—to straighten out my 
affairs,” and he put on his coat and started for the 
door. 

Hampden retained him. 

“Now, I’m not going to let you go out of here in 
that mood. You’d spoil your host’s dinner-party. 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


19 

Sit down a moment. What’ll you have? Cigarette 
—cigar—or stogie?” 

“No matter.” 

“I see—like me; anything that burns and makes 
smoke.” 

His talk was not of Cartell nor of himself, but 
only of his colleague, Fenway: his supreme skill, his 
magic-like achievements, his tireless devotion to a 
case once he undertook it, and, best of all, his inher¬ 
ent gentleness and sympathy. “If it were anyone 
else than Fenway,” he concluded, “I might not urge 
you, perhaps, to take the chance.” 

Cartell shook his head, still unconvinced. 

“Of course,” Hampden said, “we’re only human 
—all of us—except, possibly, Fenway. Sometimes I 
think he’s a little more than human.—Wednesday, 
then at three o’clock, you be here”—and he noted it 
on his date-calendar. “Meanwhile I’ll get hold of 
Dr. Fenway and see if he will-” 

“Thank you, but—I’ve quite decided”—he meant 
to refuse the appointment, but Hampden’s hearty 
hand-clasp somehow re-assured him. 

“I’ll think it over,” he said. 

“Fine,” Hampden laughed—“I’ll expect you.” 

He came away with the jolly dance-time ringing in 
his ears. The apparent confidence of the physician, 
the eager sympathy of the man, were still upon him. 
The air of a nipping, winter night braced him. He 
took courage, somehow, or promise, from a sky 



20 THE CONVALESCENTS 

blazing with stars and a full moon, hanging low, In 
an orange lantern. Occasionally a sleigh sped 
through the snow-covered street, the bells tinkling as 
if In laughter. Motor-cars streamed past, and once 
or twice he glimpsed a furred figure cuddling a bit 
closer than was really necessary in so spacious a 
seat. 

Damn it, no—It couldn’t be! This was too nice 
a world to leave forever—in two months, or even 
three I 

And even so—what of it? he asked himself, with 
nothing of bravado or Indifference. Come what 
may, it would all be over with. There’d be an end, 
one way or the other, of the dull torture he’d endured 
for months, the overwhelming weariness, the ap¬ 
palling haunt, through inert days and sleepless 
nights, that he was done for: his'will to go on. In 
the work he loved best, utterly helpless against a 
fever slow, subtle, ceaseless. 

Something to be rid of that, you bet I he told him¬ 
self, and took cheer from the conviction. 

And he was startled, amused, exhilarated to find 
how lightly the blow had fallen. Nothing like what 
one imagines—and dreads. So utterly different, in¬ 
deed, so little terrifying, that it argued error In the 
physician’s wisdom. It must be so,—a mistake!— 
else the mind would react to the sickening shock. 
And it did nothing of the sort! 

Hang It, no ! It couldn’t be as Hampden said. 
‘One chance In a hundred’—ridiculous!—for a man 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


21 


who could swing along at a five-mile pace—humming 
the Jazz-tune—and enjoying a stogie!—Hampden 
was just as likely to be wrong as Saxby and Craigie. 
—They don’t know everything—the best of them! 
~They’re only human—as Hampden admitted. 
Make mistakes—plenty. Everyone says that- 

Then, like a sudden blow, Hampden’s fame re¬ 
curred to him: the tradition, or legend, that he never 
went wrong. And for a second the thought stunned 
him: held him stock-still, on the street-corner, heed¬ 
less of the throngs of wayfarers pushing by. . . . 
And what if Fenway should agree with Hampden— 
‘one chance in a hundred’ or ‘three months’ at most 
—well, he’d fool them! Fenway could be wrong, 
too. 

In that mood of self-cheer—‘whistling in the 
dark’?—he denied it!—^he crossed into Park Lane 
and rang the bell at Mrs. Moncrieff’s. 



CHAPTER II 


THE CITY OF DESPERATE CHANCES 

M rs. MONCRIEFF wrote animal-books: for 
children. Wrote them vividly and sapiently. 
Illustrated them, too, with the uttermost precision 
of color and line and posture. So that you couldn’t 
but think she had observed and studied the beasts at 
first hand in their native forests, swamps and 
jungles. But she would promptly deny any such 
charge of mannish adventure. She had never gone 
farther in quest of the wild-life than the menagerie- 
tent of a traveling circus. Mostly and preferably 
she drew her animals from her imagination and an 
old Webster’s Dictionary. On one occasion she 
pooh-poohed her publisher’s suggestion that she fre¬ 
quent the comprehensive menageries in Bronx Park; 
she said the animals there weren’t the real thing; 
that they’d lost their natural expression of kindness 
and their amiable manners by their close association 
with human beings. 

Her occupation and absorbing interest in animals 
informed all her views and thoughts and judgments 
of human actions. Every man and woman she knew 

seemed to suggest some one of the animals she wrote 

22 


THE CONVALESCENTS 23 

about. This peculiarity pervaded her speech— 
stuck out everywhere—like a porcupine’s quills,— 
Erethlzon-dorsatus she would have phrased it to 
preclude confusion. All her metaphors, similes and 
even her moralities were derived from the animal 
kingdom. Most writers consort secretly with 
Worcester, Bartlett, Murray, Roget, Funk and 
Wagnalls. Mrs. Moncrieff carried on, openly, 
with Hagenbeck’s, Barnum-and-Balley, Ringling 
Brothers. 

And It was her habit to clinch matters by adding 
the scientific names. These she frequently confused 
with floral designations'—because of her occasional 
excursions Into stories of flowers. Thus, when speak¬ 
ing of Hons, she would add, airily. Taraxacum dens- 
leonis, linking, in her mind, the king-of-beasts and 
the dandelion. The ramping tiger of Bengal-ese 
jungles she’d tame to Lillium ti^rinum, as though it 
were a garden pet. One can Imagine the saturnine 
smile of a crocodile at hearing himself called Crocus 
sativus. And the perplexity of a placid moo-cow 
addressed by the Latin for milk-weed. 

These quite natural slips generally passed un¬ 
noticed, even by the learned men at the hospital 
where she figured In the Board of Directors, and 
where too, perhaps, she had first Imbibed her love 
of strong language as essential to scientific clarity. 

Now some urgent problems of the hospital’s 
budget had hurried her return from Florida; a 
month’s sojourn enlivened by the champs and curvets 


24 THE CONVALESCENTS 

of her niece Margot Allyn, and enriched by some 
studies of wild-life. When stale of schemes for 
animal stories Mrs. Moncrieff customarily resorted 
to Palm Beach, French Lick, Saratoga or wherever 
the season was in warmest rage. There she counted 
to find—and did, too—scenes and episodes that 
twisted, by some kink of suggestion, to her literary 
purposes. . . . One of her best known horse-stories, 

The Rebellious Filly,’’ listed in the Zoology-course 
of some girls’-schools, was suggested by the elope¬ 
ment of the season’s dove-belle at W^hite Sulphur 
with the head-caddie. 

With out-dated courtesy Cartell’s hostess ad¬ 
vanced to greet him at the drawing-room door; then 
excused herself for a moment, to take a ’phone mes¬ 
sage. Entering, he found Miss Allyn so intent upon 
the glowing fire-place and its attendant confidences 
that he was driven to a H’m to make known his 
presence. 

She hailed him sweetly with the accepted saluta¬ 
tion: “Oh, look who’s here!”; nodded slightly, ex¬ 
tended her finger-tips with the extravagant degage of 
accepted form, and eagerly presented her com¬ 
panion: “Mr. Jerome.” 

“I’ve met you before—frequently,” he perplexed 
Cartell: Every day for the past month—several 

times a day”—and he grinned accusingly at Miss 
Allyn. 

Margot demurred with ready confusion, denounc- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


25 

ing Mr. Jerome as ‘an awful josher/ but quoting 
his oft-repeated reproof: “Only way he could get 
me off the subject was to get me out of breath on the 
dance-floor or get my mouth full of water in the 
breakers.” 

This flattering candor hardly stilled Cartell’s 
guilt of intrusion in a tete-a-tete; nor dimmed a fret¬ 
ting flash of golden days and silver nights at Palm 
Beach. . . . He marvelled, half amused, that so 
slight a thing could loom so huge against the vision 
evoked at Dr. Hampden’s. . . . The earth was fall¬ 
ing from under his feet, and yet, in all the chaos that 
overwhelmed him, his thoughts compassed but one 
infinitesimal mote of the universe. Amid the crash 
of his worlds, the wreckage of friendships, strivings, 
hopes, ambitions, the balanced dread and solace of 
oblivion, he discerned only—a girl with bobbed hair; 
a face of charm unconquerable, yet hard-put to hold 
its own against the savage crafts of fashion. . . . 
To him, at this moment Margot Allyn signed and 
summed the impending dissolution. Must-—trifles 
taunted—have divined it. In his panic fancy, she 
was leading it—with this fellow Jerome at her side. 
And that hurt—ridiculously: yet poignantly, mor¬ 
tally, confirming Hampden’s words. He tried-back 
to the boast with which he’d heard them only minutes 
since; but now, in the glamour of her presence, the 
phrase wouldn’t form. 

Nor any other. He sat mute and stupid, inert 


26 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

even to Margot’s fizzen chatter ’till she turned sud¬ 
denly to Jerome, whispering aloud and proudly: 

''Isn't he hectic? I told you he was clever! Did 
I exaggerate?—he talk well?—And, you 

know, he can keep going like that—how lono’, 
Tom?” 

“Two months,” he replied, “possibly three.” 
They took his startled tone for attempted humor. 

IVIrs. Moncrieff, glancing at the clock, remarked: 
Looks as though there’d be two empty nose-bags at 
table. We’ll wait a bit longer.” 

Miss Allyn did hope that wouldn’t make them late 
for theatre; so annoying to miss the start of a play; 
rnade it quite impossible for her'—absolutely impos¬ 
sible—ever to get the hang of the thing.—“Es¬ 
pecially if it’s one of those crazy affairs that starts 

with the finish. So many of them do, lately—posi¬ 
tively.” 

^ Jerome comforted her: “Doesn’t begin tonight 
till quarter of nine, the papers say. That, of course, 
means quarter after. They’re waiting for the 

scenery; it wasn’t dry enough to travel with the com- 
pany.” 

“Then it’s a first production?” 

And the last, likely—ten-to-one shot! We see 
a lot of plays, here, that no one else ever sees. They 

come-out, try-out, peter-out, blow-out—all here_ 

sometimes before the week’s out.” 

‘ How perfectly shocking!” 

“Not when you’re looking for it. And we’re 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


27 

rarely disappointed In a premiere. Never In the 
trappings. There’ll be flowers galore tonight- 
after the second act; bouquets, wreaths, set-pieces— 
for stars, managers, figurantes, authors—sent over 
from New York—^by the regular theatrical florist; 
with large cards reading, ‘Best Wishes,’ ‘Congratu¬ 
lations,’ ‘Broadway is Waiting for You’—all writ¬ 
ten In vanishing Ink. So by the end of the week 
those same sophisticated cards can change, auto¬ 
matically, to ‘Better Luck next Time,’ ‘Condolences,’ 
and ‘Broadway Still Waiting.’ ” 

“What a perfectly darling Idea! But not really?^* 
“Yes! Only last week I saw the card of a Fifth 
Avenue florist—he himself was backing the ‘star’— 
whereon the first-night Inscription of ‘Hall the 
Chief!’ had vanished by the third night into ‘Hey, 
Rube!’ ” 

Miss Allyn thought It all terribly funny and sim¬ 
ply outrageous! “Why do they pick on this poor, 
dear town for their try-ons?” 

Jerome never could quite make It out, he admitted. 
Unless, possibly, the place was famous for its hos¬ 
pitals, surgeons, doctors, oil-stocks, soft-drinks and 
race-tracks, and the people were inclined, by nature 
and custom, to take a long chance. 

“The theatre tonight will probably be crowded. 
And they’ll stick It out, like game sports, to the last 
breath or, at least, the last trolley-car. But, please,” 
he begged, “don’t let me prejudice you at the go¬ 
off.” 


28 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“Oh, but you have!” she gurgled. “I know now 
I’m going to have a perfectly marvelous evening I” 
And beamed on him, so frankly flirtatious, that Mrs. 
Moncrieff tried to turn it off: 

“Yes, my dear, you’d rather see a new play than 
a purple-striped okapi;—Ocapia-johnstoni”—she 
specified musingly—“habitat Semliki-Uganda.” 

“I wouldn’t go so far as all that,” the young 
woman demurred. “I do like a good play. I cer¬ 
tainly do! But I do not like a bad play; positively 
notr Alarmed, apparently, by the silence that fol¬ 
lowed her daring sentiment, she added: “Anyway, 
that’s the way / feel about the drama I Don’t you, 
Mr. Jerome?” 

A maid, at the door, broke off his answer. She 
ushered in Doctor Hampden. 

There was no allusion to his tardiness save, in¬ 
directly, when the hostess presented Cartell. 

“I began to fear Doctor Hampden couldn’t get 
here—and I so wanted him to know Margot’s 
fiance.” 

The merest shadow of a sign passed between the 
two men, and they said ‘How d’ you do?’ quite as 
though on first acquaintance. 

The talk at table passed quickly over the Floridan 
sojourn to the subject uppermost in Mrs. Moncrieff’s 
mind and Dr. Hampden’s: the purpose of her 
hastened return to town. The theme in general is 
strange here to no company nor occasion; expected 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


29 

and welcomed; its presence calling for no excuse nor 
by-your-leave. With one other it spans the conver¬ 
sational gaps twixt Shakespeare and the musical 
glasses. 

The compelling interests of the community are 
confessedly limited: almost elemental. Two factors 
make up the social life: the hunting-set and the 
hospital-set. And they react, one to the other, in 
perfect mutuality; blend as naturally as Mocha and 
Java or brandy and soda. A far stretch of fancy 
might see the bond of identic occupation: the quest 
of foxy mischief-doers and their beneficent conquest. 
From each factor, too, has come a fame world-wide, 
of antithetic sorts. Foreigners, of quality to judge, 
discover in the fashion of the region a charm and 
distinction to marvel at by contrast. To Science 
the place is lesson and inspiration. To those upon 
whom Fenway, Hampden and their colleagues have 
wrought their miracles it is a shrine toward which 
they turn, humble and devout, with each new going- 
up of the sun. 

The hostess explained the vacant place at table. 
“I expected one of your girls. Doctor, from B. M. H. 
—but she just ’phoned she’d been put on an emer¬ 
gency case, at the last moment.” 

“Yes, that’s usual at present,” Hampden said: 
“nurses are scarce; can’t spare them for dinner¬ 
parties.” 

“I particularly wanted her here tonight, so you 


30 THE CONVALESCENTS 

might come to know her/’ she confessed, “and help 
her along at the hospital, if you will.” 

“Of course. Who is she?” 

“Miss Savile—this year’s class. Sandra Savile.” 

Hampden didn’t recall the name. “Town girl?” 
he asked. 

“No—Isle of Wight. Her people are old friends 
of mine—I promised to keep an eye on her. She’s 
young—and remarkably pretty.” 

“Doesn’t that identify her. Doctor Hampden?” 
Miss Allyn quizzed. 

“Hardly,” he laughed. “They’re mostly all of 
that description'—this year’s class. Seems to be a 
comet-vintage of blue-gingham.” 

“How can they possibly go in for that messy 
work? I’ll ask the world,” but she looked to Mrs. 
Moncrieff for answer. 

“Hanged if I know why they become nurses— 
some of ’em. Any more than I know why some ani¬ 
mals become hard-working cart-horses when they 
might just as well be lazy, care-free kangaroos.” 

She named several present students at B. M. H. 
who had wilfully chosen the harder role, though all 
the conditions indicated the softer. But Sandra 
Savile was an instance especially in point. “A 
beauty: well-born: thorough-bred: of the old regime: 
rich enough, too—one of the few families of the 
other days that’s managed to retrieve its bank- 
account and mint-bed. You know her people?” 
turning to Jerome. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


31 

“Yes, and some of them look upon Sandra as a 
plain ‘nut’ I” 

“Of course, she must be—‘plain nut’ or saint. 
They all are—except the few who take up the work 
because they really need the money.” 

“They could do as well, or better, elsewhere,” 
Jerome was sure, “and have a much easier time of 
it—in shops or offices—or factories.” 

“Not to be thought of! They’d rather starve— 
the poorest of them !■—in decent company.” 

“Isn’t that sentiment rather out-of-date?” 

“I believe it is, in some sections of the country.” 

Several times during dinner Cartell caught Mar¬ 
got’s eye fixed on him curiously, with questioning 
frown, even while she talked animatedly with 
Jerome. 

Afterwards, alone with him for a moment in 
the drawing-room, she half-whispered with honest 
anxiety: 

“What’s happened?” 

“I’m wondering,” he laughed uneasily. 

“Don’t be silly!—if you’re thinking of”—she 
nodded in the direction of Jerome. “I met him at 
Palm Beach—and Aunt Tony has always known 
him. Doesn’t like him, either. But he’s a pipsqueak 
at a dance. And you see what good fun he is! But 
what on earth have you been doing—since I last saw 
you.” 



32 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“Nothing much. Except think of you,’* he added 
stupidly. 

“You want to stop It, man. If It does that to you.” 
She drew In her cheeks and caved them still further 
with her finger-tips. Then turned to enjoy the 
caricature In the mirror. 

“As bad as all that?” he asked. 

“Well, you don’t look good to me—I’ll tell the 
world!” Then, to Jerome, as he drew near— 
“Advise this poor man, please, how you keep so 
perfectly fit.” 

Dr. Hampden took leave of the party at the 
carriage-door, preferring to walk the short distance 
to Dr. Fenway’s house, and knowing that Mrs. 
Moncrieff’s ancient team would need every possible 
minute to reach the theatre In season. Keeping up 
the horse-equipage was a severe strain on Mrs. Mon¬ 
crieff’s modest Income, and she was repeatedly 
advised that a small car would be less costly; but:— 
^‘Somebody must preserve a specimen or two, so they 
don’t become extinct, like their ancestral hippo- 
griffs.” 

Mrs. Moncrieff was obviously pleased when 
Hampden told Cartell he hoped to see him again 
while In town: “You’ll be here some days?” 

Cartell wasn’t quite sure: “But—^until Wednes¬ 
day, at least.” 

“Good 1 Drop in about three, If you can.” 

In the entr’-acte, following the mad scurry of 


THE CONVALESCENTS 33 

flowers down the aisles and across the foot-lights, 
quite as he had pictured, Jerome took Margot to 
promenade in the spacious foyer. Half of the audi¬ 
ence had preceded them. It was a hieratic custom— 
that concourse in the foyer—remnant of the brilliant 
age when the French Opera came up from New 
Orleans, with the novelties of Paris, Milan and 
Vienna—and now kept a-bloom, faintly, by the regu¬ 
lar recurrence of Monday night and a new play. 

There was still, of course, an established opera- 
season, Mrs. Moncrieff told Cartel!—“Not exactly 
a season—more of a spasm. Same exciting sort 
Philadelphia gets, and Newark. Odds and ends— 
mostly ends—of the Metropolitan Company bundled 
over here in the last day-train from New York, with 
their ward-robes in wicker suit-cases, dinner in hat- 
boxes and colds in the head. 

*^Aidaj with ‘specially selected cast,’ advertised 
months ahead. Day of performance, newspapers 
announce Louise —substituted at last moment, ‘in re¬ 
sponse to overwhelming demand’—which wouldn’t 
be so bad, only the curtain goes up on Faust, sung by 
understudies of Tristan with the scenery of Salambo, 
Turns out that Aida, originally scheduled here, was 
switched at the last moment to Philadelphia—or 
Newark—to take the place of CarmenT 

“They send us plays—like this one tonight—still 
on the milk-bottle; but our opera comes on crutches.” 

She paused to exchange greeting, over the box- 
rail, with two or three men returning from the foyer. 


34 the convalescents 

Nodded to other familiars in the audience—some in 
small groups and, mostly, well down front. 

“Must have been a rush of operations today! 
So many of them here tonight—the doctors and 
surgeons, I mean,” she added, and, Cartell evincing 
pronounced interest, she indicated several in the audi¬ 
ence—some names of world-fame—to which she 
appended initials that sounded like degrees in science 
or literature but were really abbreviations of their 
respective hospitals. Presumably you knew that— 
the meaning of U. C. M.—D. K. S.—I. D. I.— 
M. G. H. 

On each name, too, she pinned some tidbit of 
anatomy, as a decoration of prowess in that par¬ 
ticular field: “Professor Beckwith”'—for instance— 
“I. D. I.—stomatology.”—“Inchcape—gynaecology 
—and splendid dancer!” “Old Switcher—R. F. U. 
—cerebellum'—sees every show in town.” Cartell 
had already observed him—because of his fearless 
resemblance to Ibsen and his roaring enjoyment of a 
peculiarly idiotic comedian who was pretending to be 
half-witted and who actually was. Presently the 
famous cerebrologist ceased laughing and was mak¬ 
ing notes on his cuff; he had happened on material 
for his next lecture. 

Keen for distraction from anxieties peculiar to 
their calling, they turn straight to the theatre—“like 
a lot of college-boys after their mid-year’s,” Mrs. 
Moncrieff compared. “Good or bad, they don’t 
seem to mind—just so it’s a show. In fact, I believe 


THE CONVALESCENTS 35 

the worse It Is the better they like It—same as with 
operations, It’s much more relaxing. The managers 
must know that or they wouldn’t send us such hope¬ 
less—^—” She smiled to some one In the third row: 
“That’s Tantree—^and young Fenway—son of the 
great man. They’re from B. M. H.—that’s Doctor 
Hampden’s hospital.—And, by the way, you may 
feel quite set up over his asking you to call. He 
doesn’t usually bother with well people.” 

Cartell Imagined that she pointed the “well,” In¬ 
viting candor—quickly, while they were still alone. 
But to his questions regarding Hampden she 
answered nothing of such import'—unless, possibly, 
by Implication. 

A celebrity even In the first teens of his boyhood. 
On the ball-field he pitched a curve that was a joy 
or despair, according to which side he played on. 
At school-party, even the kissing-games were slighted 
to coax and tease the bashful young wizard Into 
amazing card-tricks, palming of rings and coins, 
feats of slelght-of-hand. 

In blind-man’s buff, his out-stretched hands went 
straight to the prize, as though the fingers saw. 

Church-fairs and charity-bazaars counted on his 
talents more hopefully than on the oyster-stew or the 
pastor’s address. On such beneficent occasions he 
might be persuaded to exhibit, as an especial attrac¬ 
tion, his mystic powers of magnetism whereby a pass 
of the hand drew electric sparks from the giggling 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


36 

subjects, and lifted chairs and tables from the floor 
without touching them. 

He was one of the rare high-lights in the gayeties 
and excitements of the small town. The county 
weekly proclaimed the prodigy a future rival of 
Herrmann, Keller, Cinquevalli and, confusing leger- 
de-main with diplomacy, Machiavelli; predicted for 
the town’s pride a notable public career on the stage 
or, at least, in big-time vaudeville. 

Genius conscious, as always, of its intent and 
prowess, had a different vision. 


CHAPTER III 


OVER THE ’PHONE 


Wednesday Evening 
First Voice 

Hello, doctor!—That man I sent over this after¬ 
noon-? 

Second Voice 
Yes. He was here. 

First Voice 

Good!—Thought he might back out. 

Second Voice 
No. Here ahead of time. 

First Voice 
What do you think? 

Second Voice 

Same as you. 

First Voice 

Sorry. Hoped I might be wrong. 

Second Voice 
No. Not a chance. 


37 



38 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

First Voice 
Mention what Saxby and Craigie told him? 

Second Voice {with light la \ ughter ) 

Yes, yes.—What do you make of that?—^Good 
men I 

First Voice 

Must have decided no use. 

Second Voice 

Yes, of course. Saxby couldn’t possibly miss: 
Craigie hardly. Case simple enough. 

First Voice 

Can you take it? 

Second Voice 

Guess I’ll have to—crowd it in somewhere. Says 
otherwise he’ll let it go. Attractive case, too. 

First Voice 
Worth the chance? 

Second Voice 
What do you think? 

First Voice 

Same as you. 

Second Voice { decisively ) 

Yes. Can’t hurt. May help. 

First Voice { troubled ) 

No room at B. M. H. at the moment, Dr. Krewe- 
son says—unless he pushes some one out. 


39 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

Second Voice 

He will! Anyway, no particular hurry. Man 
said he’d want some time to put his affairs in shape. 
I gave him till Friday. We’ll get him in somewhere. 

First Voice {rather hesitant) 

Don’t know anything of his circumstances. 

Second Voice 

He volunteered that. Said he would pay in time 
if he lived and could pay at once if he died. 

First Voice 

Satisfactory? 

Second Voice 

Perfectly.—Interesting case.—And, say, Hamp¬ 
den {as if suddenly seeing a great light) ^ you know 
I really believe I can save that man with a little luck. 

First Voice {through hurst of daughter) 

Ha—ha—ha ! You believe that of every case you 
take I That’s the one thing I envy you most—^your 
sublime faith.'— {Abruptly serious.) Say, have you 
seen that new play at the ‘Grand’ ? . . . Dr. Switcher 
says not to miss it—worst thing of the year. . . . 
All right—I’ll meet you there. 

This the placid prelude to the journey out: The 
Great Adventure—so-called. 

Hope names it so, and resignation. In the crystal 
of the metaphor one reads whatsoever faith orders, 
custom accepts, or fancy chooses. But the chronicle 


40 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


stops at the title or, at most, a page or two 
beyond: a huddle of notes, impressions, regrets, 
apocrypha. . . . 

For that anabasis there’s been no Xenophon, no 
Stanley, no Amundsen; not even a good Crusoe nor 
Capt. Cook. Nothing better, when put to test, than 
some ‘old Doc’ Cook. . . . 

Much was looked for from the sensitive Swin¬ 
burne; and, more confidently, from the sensible 
William James—if not directly, then through the 
medium of his ^‘white blackbird.” . . The painter 
Whistler felt himself certain to come back, counting 
perhaps on his ability to quarrel with whatever com¬ 
pany he might be thrown in. And the canvases 
alleged to have been done by Whistler’s ghost in 
Peoria, Ill., through the medium of a local artist, 
were construed by some as the promised message; 
but Joseph Pennell, Whistler’s disciple and biog¬ 
rapher, decided at a glance that the pictures were 
not authentic. Mr. Pennell argues that they are not 
of Whistler’s technique nor quality and that, even if 
they were, Whistler would not have painted them in 
Peoria. . . . What message might have eventually 
rung clear to Sir Oliver Lodge he jumbled in his 
thrifty hurry to open the box-office; the spirit-voice 
drowned in the show-man’s ballyhoo. So the eager 
page is still blank. 

Save for the start; sudden, always—as with this 

* Professor James’s pet-name for Mrs. Piper whom he declared 
his one honest subject. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


41 


man—hurried, dazed, panicky'—panic that routs 
even fear. That the traveler notes with amaze and 
ecstasy: he is not afraid!—“Hope is the coward. 
Despair’s a brave man”? Or mere vanity, perhaps? 
—an orderly, dignified exit. From the fuddle^ of his 
wits that thought flashes, absurdly; some “last 
words” of the great that hint rehearsal. From 
buried memory an instance leaps, crazily imperti¬ 
nent: The actor, given to servant-roles and wife¬ 
beating, who all his stage-life had yearned for a 
chance at Kotzebue’s resounding line, “The man 
who lays his hand on woman save in the way of 
kindness,” and so forth. Fate denying, or profes¬ 
sional intrigue, the player kept the speech pat for 
his final exit. But at the great moment habit 
gasped instead: “My lord, the carriage waits.” 
Which wasn’t so bad at that. . . . 

From the throng about him—kinsmen, intimates 
and strangers—he hears sure promise of easy travel 
and safe return. But none keen to companion! 
That he senses poignantly, and, somehow, resents: 
he must travel alone. . . . Yet impatient to be off 
—^away from the sombre portents of the parting: 
hand-clasps icy and tremulous with dread: tell-tale 
glances, tears that will not be denied, smiles that 
grief grotesques to grimace.—No, no, it isn’t a gay 
send-off, whatever they may tell you of sweets 
further on. . . . But still—not afraid! That’s the 
supreme surprise and revelation. . . . 

You don’t really know—you’ve read and heard 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


42 

from experts. Pain has numbed your senses—and, 
at last, the needle—But for all they tell you, you 
know—and that you don’t care! Just so it’s done 
and over with. You’re putting these people to a 
lot of bother. Keeping them from their engage¬ 
ments.—You catch a whisper of luncheon, matinee, 
tennis. . . . Why the deuce did all this have to 
happen? So unnecessary—ridiculous! . . . That 
nurse—the one who seems to sense it so—eyes you 
rather blamingly. . . . The only honest show of 
cheerfulness is from the surgeons and doctors, which 
the patient rather suspects for stage-business or 
professional politesse. ... At this particular mo¬ 
ment they are comparing modern civilization with 
that of Thebes and Luxor and, in the next breath, 
Virginia cigarettes with Cairene.—“Which do you 
prefer?” Dr. Hampden is asking the patient—who 
confides reply, in tones of thunder echoed a thou¬ 
sand-fold, to a huge, slow-descending candle-snuffer. 

. . . Nothing like what one has always imagined— 
from picture, poem, lore and conscience:—a lan¬ 
guid, halting, groping stumble through a twilight 
vale of cypress, moss and willows. Instead, mad 
careering through space—a sea of azure ether— 
no question of the musky ether!—^astride a giant 
rocket, making straight for the moon—no, that 
planet beyond—now that further on—and now one 
still beyond—way—^way—way—beyond . . . 


CHAPTER IV 


A DANCE IN THE VALLEY OF SHADOWS 

T he idea of his being here was ridiculous. The 
whole thing was preposterous, from the start. 
Cartell tried to protest, but he couldn’t make him¬ 
self heard above the racket of the jazz-band. Or, 
else, they pretended not to hear. Cartell knew he 
wasn’t so thick-headed or leaden-footed as all that! 
He didn’t have to be prodded and thumped, pounded 
and hammered into the rhythm. It was a silly step, 
anyway; he had never cared to dance it, nor to see 
others. It wasn’t a dance, really; more like a 
walking-ague, when done by amateurs. Under pro¬ 
fessional skill it became a syncopatic palsy. And 
they meant him to do it in that fashion, if they had 
to beat it into him and the life out of him. 

He was a fool to come here, in the first place. 
He’d been warned of what they’d do to him and 
what sort of dance they’d lead him. He must have 
been—^but, no, he hadn’t drunk enough for that; 
only the fill of an ice-cream cone. And, besides, it 
was a peculiarly thin wine, light as Clos-de-Chaume, 
though of a very assertive bouquet—if you chose to 
call it that. There’d been an aperitif, too; but just 

43 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


44 

a few quick sips from a toy chalice, slim as a needle. 
. . . Yes, he might hold out and come through it, 
but—‘one chance In a hundred!’—even with the 
help of the jazz-band. Still, this couldn’t be their 
usual method. They must be playing a joke on him 
'—fantastic, elaborate, horse-play joke. 

That’s why they brought him here for his lesson 
—In this spacious sweep of poppies and asphodel— 
with music to draw a crowd to enjoy his awkward¬ 
ness. They doubtless had a movie-camera taking 
the scene and tonight he’d be shimmering on the 
screen for ii cents Including war-tax. . . . Well, 
he’d fool them: he’d provide a finish they hadn’t 
counted on: he’d find the camera and smash It— 
and he started to cross the field. But he couldn’t 
move, not one step. To that extremity of weariness 
he’d been beaten by that corps of dancing- 

But wherever had he got that crazy notion? 
There was the jazz—he still heard that—but as for 
the rest—a trick of the eyes. In the hazy moon-light. 
He sought to rub them to clearer vision, and raised 
his hand only to have It beaten down by a sledge- 
blow. Those figures, ranged ’round Cartell, now 
were giants. Titan-tall; their bodies naked except 
for a breech-clout; their faces not cruel, simply grim, 
brutish, business-like. He’d seen them before, or 
the like of them: but where—where? O, yes, years 
and years ago. In the High-School History of Rome; 
these were Attlla’s gang-men. Or was It only lately, 
in the newspapers: the cartoonist’s Hun, or the sym- 



THE CONVALESCENTS 45 

bol of Capital I No—he recalled now, perfectly— 
it was in Paris, just before the war, at a Quatz-Arts 
ball.—Just such a group of skin-clad cave-men who^ 
wielded stuffed clubs to clear strangers off the floor 
and made Sabines of their lady-friends. 

Only, these giants drawing nearer, with horrid 
stride, bore actual sledges: man-high, wooden and 
iron-cored. And now each, in rhythmic turn, struck 
Cartell a mighty blow, on shoulders, back, neck, 
chest and arms and legS'—everywhere except his 
head—wielding the sledge with the swing of a 
lumber-jack or the strong-man at the County Fair. 

So that he shook and trembled in every part of 
his body; quivered, at each impact of the sledge, in 
every muscle, fiber, vein and atom. Yet he scarcely 
tottered: stood nearly upright. Marvelled why they 
could not beat him down. Nor cause him pain nor 
hurt nor any feeling, except only a queer dull sense 
of shock, appalling, stunning even his will to cry out 
Pity! Mercy! Not for himself—he had ceased to 
care—but for that wan, white-haired figure, stand¬ 
ing there in the moonlight, always with eyes fixed 
upon him, her hands folded in prayer, her saintly 
face drawn with infinite and impotent sorrow. 

Then a hand, warm and soft, takes hold of his 
five finger-bones, and leads him softly, watchfully, as 
though he were a child or blind, to a bank of white 
clover. Sweet-smelling water touches his lips, cools 
his temples, refreshes his heavy eyes, so that they 


46 THE CONVALESCENTS 

open and he sees, at the side of the bed—the blue- 
gingham girl. 

“Are you in pain, sir?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“And you’re quite comfortable?” 

“Certainly. ’Tisn’t so bad at all—^being dead.” 

“Indeed you’re not, sir. Far from it. Doctor 
Fenway says. He’s quite pleased—and Doctor 
Hampden'—and all of us.” 

“Good work?” 

“Yes, sir—most attractive! Now you’re to 
sleep.” 

**Yes—sure hit. ‘Larry’ plays it well, too—up 
there. Great idea—doctor’s son—jazz-band!” 

“Quiet, sir!” 

“No, go on, Larry. Clever idea—^keeps one 
from thinking.” 

“You must sleep, sir.” 

“Thank you^—I’ve been asleep—months. Let’s 
see your card.” 

“This is the chart.” 

“Full-up?” 

“Not yet, sir.” 

“Thank you. May I have the—next—dance?” 

“When you wake up.” 

“But—I may—never-” 

“Take this ice, sir.” 

“Whatever you’re taking—thanks—and we’ll sit 
out the dance.—But save the last one—please.” 



47 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

“If you’ll only sleep-’’ 

“I’d like to. They’re starting ‘Minnie,’ poor, 
tired ‘Min-’ ’’ 

The nurse made sure that he was quite asleep. 
Then she sat at the table and wrote, peeringly, in 
the twilight, the day’s record of the case, and made 
some notes for report to Miss Newlands, night- 
nurse. 

These things she did with precision and detach¬ 
ment that were impeccably professional: quite as 
though Miss Beaux, the superintendent, were look¬ 
ing over her shoulder. Then, her chart written up, 
she did some things not at all professional. Stood 
over the patient with a gaze of affright and despair. 
. . . If Miss Beaux saw that!'—Touched her eyes 
with a corner of her kerchief. Muttered, under her 
breath: “Rotten luck—poor devil!” And then, 
turning to leave the room, heard voices in the hall: 
paused discreetly at the door and blew her pert little 
nose, twice! 

If the State Board of Licenses heard that! Blow¬ 
ing her nose—under such circumstances! And still 
in blue-gingham! In a graduate it might be a cold, 
if not a coryza; in a student-nurse—a month or two 
before her examinations—it was a challenge. 

No, Myrtilla—you’re wrong! ’Tisn’t going to 
happen. Not that kind of a story. The web isn’t 
weaving—worse luck!'—as you seem to imagine 
from that trivial indiscretion of a very young nurse. 





THE CONVALESCENTS 


48 

Couldn’t possibly be, for many reasons. You met 
one of them a while ago—hair bobbed—^at Mrs. 
Moncrieff’s. 

*That girl?’ 

Why not? Piquante, amiable, sprightly. 

‘And slangy—every other word!’ 

No, Methuselah—not slang; merely the accepted 
phrases—for facile speech—of a type too im¬ 
petuous to bother about individual expression.—You 
wouldn’t have the girl pedantic, precieuse —‘pie- 
face,’ ‘gooseberry,’ in modish locution?-—And she’s 
certainly good to look at—a picture! 

‘Literally: henna — chinese-white — magenta — 
kohl I’ 

The accepted ornature of the type—Cotton 
Mather. The spiel-marks of yesterday are the hall¬ 
marks today. You wouldn’t have her make herself 
conspicuous-—like the show-girl who now boldly 
bares her cheeks of make-up and frankly hides her 
legs under skirts in order to pique interest, by 
strangeness? Nothing so bizarre for Margot 
Allyn!—Convention is the panache of the type. Rip 
—the most highly conventionalized type that society 
has evolved since .your storied night-out in the 
Catskills. . . . 

‘Some say that Shaw did it—G. B.’ 

No more than P. T., the Shaw of showmen, 
“did” the mermaid, or the mummy of Thothmes.^ 

* Nothing of the Barnumiana enshrined in the Bridgeport Me¬ 
morial so specifies the desiccated caesar.— Publisher’s Note. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 49 

‘Others think the War is responsible—^the Last 
War/ 

No, Adam, the First War. And ever since she 
has been studied as Agassiz studied butterflies: 
pulled apart, analyzed, classified as Linnaeus did 
with flowers: painted as Audubon painted birds. 
Neurology, pathology, psychology have man¬ 
handled her without gloves. The gleanings of their 
observation and experience, literature catalogues in 
ruthless and unblushing detail. Through it all she 
comes unchanged in essentials. 

Each generation has imagined her peculiar to it¬ 
self: a product of the time and portentous. When 
the younger Dumas first put her on the stage, in the 
shape of Balbine Leverdet, he thought necessary to 
explain and justify his audacity in one of the most 
elaborate dossiers of dramatic literature. To read 
his preface of “L’Ami des Femmes,” where he first 
caged her, one would think he had discovered a 
strange animal hitherto supposed to be extinct. 

Fearful lest he be ridiculed as a nature-fakir the 
dramatist turned to biology; measured, bertilloned 
and vivisected the creature, assembling an array of 
anatomical and physiological details that one would 
hardly dare repeat unless writing a medical record 
or A Novel of Feminine Psychology. 

Dumas shirked nothing, from head to toes'— 
which he found “all of about the same length.” . . . 
In the palm of her hand he traced a double line, or 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


50 

even a triple, broken at several points, semi-circular, 
and, sometimes, enclosing or furrowing the monts 
of Saturn and of the Sun, “in which case—look out! 
. . . Ask her to dance—and she wants nothing bet¬ 
ter—and you will see that she is tireless, and you 
will feel against your arm, ribs at once supple and 
firm as blades of steel. She will not lean upon you 
—on the contrary she will carry you along, but her 
left hand will bite into your shoulder. At the end 
of the dance, her breath will be of extraordinary 
purity, of sweetness that recalls vaguely the savor of 
the true wine of Cyprus. . . . Plaudite sed cavete, 
civesi For she has no heart, no ideal, no soul. But 
she eats well”—(the most romantic novelist of this 
day harps on that)-—“she digests well, she sleeps 
well; elle ronfleJ^ Yet, despite all, Dumas exclaims, 
easy to love. 

So Cartell found her—distractingly easy. 

‘And so, too, that other man, for whom, plainly, 
she’s going to throw him over.’ 

No such intention—not for a moment! 

‘Then why the deuce all that flirtation?—Some¬ 
thing else “accepted”?’ 

Demoded, O Postumus! Obsolete—“flirtation”! 
—That sort of thing went out with Waldteufel. 
The word itself went out with corsets.—^The type is 
exquisitely sincere: la porte est ouverte ou fermee; 
she does or she doesn’t. And her word once given 
—^but even if it hadn’t been- 



THE CONVALESCENTS 51 

Sandra Savile isn’t going to marry—ever! She 
has always said so; and vowed it—to herself—^when 
she put on her cap nearly three years ago. Nothing 
could ever persuade her to change her mind—unless 
possibly it promised continuance of her career in 
larger field. . . . Research-work—that’s her dream. 
And Harley—the young surgeon who just left the 
room—that’s his plan, too. Their common interest 
. . . and now Sandra put on this desperate case— 
and not by the long arm of coincidence, but by a 
broken ankle. 

Still, your mistaken fancy had some basis. It has 
happened just so, in fiction and fact. Cupid’s shaft 
and the surgeon’s knife sometimes sharpen on the 
same whet-stone. 

But this case didn’t interest him. Rather hope¬ 
less, all around. In any event, no hurry job I A 
glance at the nurse shows him that. No chancy here 
for his famous first-sight trick. That’s a game for 
two. That limp shaving of a man they just brought 
in—no trouble to hit him and send the arrow clear 
through. But that girl they’ve put in charge of the 
case—with the air of a debutante Amazon but a 
cupid’s-bow mouth—Why the deuce did they choose 
Miss Savile—prettiest in the place and least ex¬ 
perienced!—she’d catch his arrow on the wing and 
use it for a hat-pin. She had two or three of them 
now. . . . Still, he’d hang around. You never can 
tell—in a hospital! Largely a matter of luck, any¬ 
where. And he’d had fiddler’s luck in this place. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


52 

Doctor Kreweson, the house physician, looking- 
over the chart of Number Seventy-three remarked 
the fever. 

“Much delirium?” he asked. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Gruesome—morbid ?” 

“No, sir; light and rather—attractive. Imagines 
we-all have a jazz-band upstairs, with Doctor 
Hampden’s little son, Larry, to lead it. I thought 
I’d best mention that, sir, as bearing on the psychosis 
of the case.” 

“So it does, in a way.” But without knowing all 
the facts. Doctor Kreweson ventured a guess that 
the patient had called at Doctor Hampden’s on 
some occasion out of office-hours and heard one of 
Larry’s clinics of native American music, with illus¬ 
trations by a full orchestra composed of and con¬ 
ducted by Larry himself and in person. 

Kreweson further admonished the nurse that it 
was an unusual opportunity, coming on the eve of 
her examinations; she ought to learn a lot in the 
next few days. 

“Oh I—Quick as all that?” 

He ‘hoped’ so'—ambiguously. They needed the 
room. They always did at B. M. H. 

Doctor Hampden, later, confirmed his colleague’s 
guess as to the dance-delusion. That the incident 
made, apparently, a lasting impression on the patient 


THE CONVALESCENTS 53 

need not be taken to indicate a condition of neurosis 
or hyperesthesia. He himself, though in normally 
good health, had frequently been similarly affected 
by some of his boy’s musical researches. 


CHAPTER V 


THE SPHINX SHOWS HER COLORS AND 

HER EARS 

S IX of them, the patient counted, as they filed 
into the room. They had, apparently, agreed 
on a verdict and came to pronounce it. 

They marched in softly, but briskly, in step, with 
military formality: Doctor Fenway leading. Fol¬ 
lowed, Dr. Hampden. Then, in regular order, 
Kreweson, house-physician; Tantree, his assistant— 
young, boyish-looking—^alarmingly so, considering; 
his assistant, the junior Fenway—even more alarm- 
ing, by his youthfulness; Harley, dressing-surgeon— 
nearly as remote as the other two from Osier’s curse 
on the hopeless forties. 

They took posts about the bed promptly, pre¬ 
cisely, strategically, as if by some long-established 
plan. Just as players might take their positions for 
the sure ascent of a climactic “scene.” ... So many 
things in a hospital suggest the stage; the arena of 
the clinics they name “theatre.” 

Simultaneously with their coming in. Miss New- 
lands, the night-nurse, went—no, she didn’t; she 
faded out of the room—floated, evaporated—eva- 

54 


THE CONVALESCENTS 55 

nesced . She never simply came In or went out, so 
far as one could see or hear. She was either there, 
or she wasn’t'—which Is about the last refinement of 
trained-nursing. Now, Miss Savlle, the day-nurse— 
you knew when she came Into the room—Zip I 
Bang I Three rousing cheers!—the Instant she 
turned the door-knob. 

. . . Still—you don’t want a nurse too quiet. It’s 
depressing, rather. Not fair, either, to compare her 
—In ’prentice blue—with the starched product In 
white duck. 

The physicians fell at once to animated confer¬ 
ence—wholly In pantomime! Doctor Fenway, of 
course, directed and dominated the mute conversa¬ 
tion In which symptoms were discussed and treat¬ 
ments Indicated by frowns, finger-touches, nods, up¬ 
lifted eye-brows, smiles, faint or grim, by moving 
lips that uttered nothing audible, yet told everything. 

Even with drowsy eyes, Cartell solved the hiero¬ 
glyphics'—labial, digital, manual; sensed the kindly 
intent of the silent physicians; their reluctance to 
say the word:—‘Shot at sunrise,’ or something to 
that effect. And, curiously, he didn’t much mind. 
That’s one of the neatest tricks of Nature—the In¬ 
difference that keeps pace with her cruelties and 
finally out-runs them. So that now come what 
may- 

“You have a good nurse In Miss Newlands,” Dr. 
Fenway was saying. 

“Seems to be,” the patient assented faintly. 



'56 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“One of our very best.” 

“Thank you,” feebly. 

“You’re quite comfortable with her?” 

“I suppose so—comfortable as I could be with 
anyone.” 

“Doesn’t get on your nerves, in any way?” 

“I haven’t noticed. And I’m sure she does her 
best.” 

“Yes, of course!—But her personality—is that 
sympathetic to you, or not?” 

“I guess so.” 

“Nothing you’d like us suggest to Miss New- 
lands?” 

“N—No.” . . . What’s the use? he said to him¬ 
self. She does read a newspaper with the rustle and 
crinkle and crackle of a devil-chaser on Fourth-o’- 
July—^but every woman does that—except maybe 
Miss Savile- 

“Speak out, if she isn’t perfectly satisfactory,” 
Dr. Hampden encouraged. “Sometimes a nurse 
may rasp a patient, and no one could tell why. If 
for any reason you don’t like Miss Newlands, or for 
no reason at all, say so and we’ll try to find another 
for you.” 

“No, no, please!” Cartell objected with sudden 
vigor. “Don’t make a change! They’re all pretty 
much the same, aren’t they?—You couldn’t find a 
better nurse than Miss Newlands. And I’m used to 
her now. I wouldn’t have her go just because of an 
idiotic notion that, maybe, I don’t like the way she 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


57 

does her hair.—Besides, most of the time she’s here 
I’m tight asleep, and when I wake up in the morning 
I find the day nurse on duty.” 

Dr. Kreweson named her to the others: “Miss 
Savile.” 

“How do you like her?” Dr. Hampden asked. 

“She’s a dear! Charming girl! Perfectly charm¬ 
ing! Why, I never saw such—^—” 

“Yes, yes, of course,” Dr. Hampden interrupted; 
“but as a nurse, what do you think of her? Good 
nurse?” 

“Too good! Wears herself out over a patient. 
Takes entirely too much interest in a case.” 

“She’ll get over that!” Dr. Harley apologized to 
his colleagues. “She’s very young, I believe.” 

“Terribly young—for such a trying patient as I 
am. 

“We gave her the case,” the house-physician ex¬ 
plained, “only because we couldn’t get hold of a 
graduate-nurse. We had secured one—Miss Dal¬ 
keith, last year’s class—but the night before she 
broke her ankle.” 

“I don’t mind,” the patient said; “Miss Savile is 
quite all right.” 

“She will be, when she’s had experience.” 

“She doesn’t need experience! That would only 
spoil her!” Cartell protested. “She’s a nurse by 
nature—born full-equipped to her calling—divinely 
perfect—like Minerva and Shelley and Mozart and 
I—and—don’t bring in a new one, please! I’ve had 



58 THE CONVALESCENTS 

enough strange young women giving me sponge- 
baths.” 

Outside the door, Doctor Hampden said: 

“I begin to think that man has a chance to pull 
through.” 

“Talks as if he’d like to,” Doctor Fenway as¬ 
sented. “That’s something. Didn’t much care when 
he came here.—How about that student-nurse? Too 
young for the case?” 

“Ye-e-s, perhaps, but—er-” 

“Yes, precisely. Can’t hurt, may help.” 

A tall, gaunt-figured orderly, standing near, over¬ 
hears and nods his quixotic head approvingly. 

Later, as they were leaving the hospital. Miss 
Beaux informed them that she had secured another 
nurse for “73”—graduate—three years’ practice— 
to replace Miss Savile. 

“By no means!” they almost chorused. “Patient’s 
in a highly nervous state. A change might alarm 
him.” 

“I was only fearing,” she explained, “that Miss 
Savile is rather—Inexperienced.” 

Doesn’t matter at present, they assured her; case 
still desperate. As much a matter of luck, now, as 
anything. Patient doesn’t dislike the nurse, and 
that’s the chief point, after all. 

“Yes, of course,” Miss Beaux agreed. “And at 
night, there’s Miss Newlands'—so resourceful in a 
crisis! Almost hears a change.” 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


59 

Whereat the house-physician laughed and mum¬ 
bled something. 

“I don’t like it, myself,” Miss Beaux spoke up. 
*‘You can’t, of course, dictate to a graduate, in such 
matters, but I’ve forbidden it, point-blank, to the 
student-nurses.” 

When Miss Newlands returned to the room, the 
patient noted a subtle change—somehow. Case go¬ 
ing badly, he thought—the doctors had told her. 
But, no—he dismissed the fear—Miss Newlands 
wouldn’t betray it—never did—by look, tone, or 
manner. Miss Savile did, always. An unfavorable 
symptom'—whispered in the hall after the doctor’s 
visit—and back she came breathing hard, eyes wide- 
open in a droll panic, and lips puckered in a deter¬ 
mined smile. That’s what made her such a perfect 
nurse, Cartell figured out—her helpless struggle to 
look cheerful that any decent patient would will his 
hardest to justify. He might not get tiliat from an 
older nurse, inured by experience. Miss Newlands 
signed nothing—good or bad; tranquil, immobile, 
cryptic as a sphinx, always. 

Until tonight. Now there was a difference, some¬ 
how. For one thing, she’d set her cap at a different 
angle—sort of chip-on-the-shoulder tilt. Becoming, 
too I But that wasn’t the real difference, Cartell de¬ 
cided. 

Two or three times, the nurse, glancing up from 
her book, caught him staring, searchingly, into space. 


6 o 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“Stop thinking, sir,” she recalled him with the 
usual formula. “Case going splendidly, the doctors 
say—if that’s what you’re frowning about.” 

“No—I was just wondering—You from this sec¬ 
tion of the country?” 

“Yes, sir—Fayette County—the Blue Grass 
region.—Good horses, you know.” 

“Yes. And do they all have such pretty ears— 
the women, I mean.” 

She really couldn’t say—and she said It Icily, as if 
to freeze admiration In the very bud. Reached for 
the thermometer, too. Then, with a peal of laugh¬ 
ter, though the hall-door was wide-open — 

“This Is so sudden, sir!” 

“Yes, but I never saw them ’till now.” 

“We aim to please,” she quoted, still laughing— 
at him, he felt uncomfortably and that a patient’s 
ravings should be a sacred confidence. 

“Nurses have a sixth sense,” he ventured fish- 
ingly,—“or very near it.” 

“We’re never very far from the door,” the sphinx 
retorted. 

Thafs how she—“Well, it is more becoming that 
way, isn’t it?” he insisted. 

“We never contradict a patient—and”—smiling 
into the mirror—“I think it looks—hideous 1 ” To 
prove It, she blushed ecstatically. Which a sphinx 
doesn’t do, without a noble purpose. 

And they had questioned that personality: ‘Sym¬ 
pathetic, or not?’ They ought to see it now—with 


THE CONVALESCENTS 6i 

the ears showing I . . . Wherever had he got the 
fool notion that she wasn’t—like Miss Savile—a 
perfect nurse I Gracious, skilled to accoy, obliging, 
alert, understanding almost to clairvoyance—every¬ 
thing that Miss Savile was—except, only, not Miss 
Savile. 

“They’re not going to change the day-nurse,” 
Miss Newlands said, “unless you insist.” 

(‘Mind-reading?’ he worried: ‘Or did they 
blab that, tool’) 

“We all hope you won’t, sir. She’d be terribly 
hurt if they took her off the case. Counts on it to 
help her through her exam’s. And Dr. Harley says 
she’s doing splendidly.” 

(‘Yes, yes, he’d noticed Harley’s admiration.’) 

“You must try to like Miss Savile. That helps 
the case a lot.-—Quite as much as—-experience.” 

(‘Hang it, they did blab I’) 

Her laughter routed his confusion: “Sandra is a 
dear. Always has been. We were at school to¬ 
gether.” 

“From the same town, then?” 

“No, indeed, sir. My home’s Fayette County, 
She’s from Isle of Wight.” 

“England!” 

“Oh, no, sir—^Virginia.” 

Shocking—one’s not knowing that I 

So they always “placed” themselves. Never of 
town, city or even State; invariably county.—A cus¬ 
tom enduring perhaps from their English ancestry. 


62 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


along with certain vocal modulations and the neat 
turn of some particular locution to general purposes. 
Thus with “attractive.” 

In frequence of use and variety, in range of mean¬ 
ing shaded by accent, tone or glance, the word had 
taken on the handiness of slang and some of the 
tang. It lacked, perhaps, the tender appeal of 
“Believe me. Bo!” the gustatory finality of “You’ve 
said a mouthful!” the cave-woman defiance and 
candor of “I’ll tell the world!” and the intrigue 
implied in “Dearie, you don’t know half!” Against 
these lusty lingos of the North, “attractive” might 
seem wan and slender, and yet on the lips of these 
women the word was quite as efficient and peculiarly 
—attractive. 

Cartell had now first acquaintance of the women 
of this section. His knowledge hitherto—notions, 
rather—was by hear-say, books, plays. Mostly, 
plays. 

The stage-picture is of two types widely disparate: 
but both, essentially, tin-types. She is either the 
fiery, sassy mountain girl, with short unkempt locks 
and a long-barreled shot-gun consecrated to wipe 
out an entire family in its remotest branches, direct 
and collateral, because one of ’em “spat at Paw,” 
after betraying his moonshine. Or else she is a 
grown-up Little Eva, with a curl over one shoulder, 
a red rose over her ear, and an accent blended of 
Scottish and African. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 63 

Here, now, one might see the reality; and'—it so 
happened—in the finest flower, the pick of the bas¬ 
ket, the crack cull of the counties. Many charac¬ 
teristics they had in common, as of a type brought to 
its best and guarded pure. Yet their differences, too, 
persisted and were as many as the number of them; 
being women. But in one quality, constant, domi¬ 
nant, to Cartell astounding, they were singularly 
alike. 

To be patient, gentle and faithful—that is of 
course; the rules of the game so order; it is the 
primer of the profession, the creed and the ritual. 
And the honor of it. 

To walk calm, serene and strong through these 
corridors of sorrow, pain and impending doom: to 
make a brave show of cheerfulness and confidence: 
to hearten and refresh the unending march-past of 
youth and age on the way to its calvary—that, too, 
is the common-place of their calling. The code 
of their guild imposes it: all in the day’s work: part 
of the job. And the power of it. 

But these women are jolly—frankly, plainly 
jolly I No text-book on nursing can order that I 
Nor the song-of-heart at their work, the dance in 
the eye, the laugh on the lip, the buoyant, tip-toe 
tread of girlhood. 

Youth will be served to gayety—that the lesson 
of it?—And beauty will have its fling, even while 
doom cracks?'—Unfeeling, the cynic may see it; 


64 THE CONVALESCENTS 

cold to suffering; chilled by constant custom of pain, 
numbed by habitude of tragedy. 

That’s the honor of it—and the power—and the 
glory—that they endure the horrendous travail with 
a show of carelessness, frivolity, flippancy if you 
like^—a blessed flippancy that shames the patient’s 
fears and omens and turns that waiting Shadow 
from the half-opened door. 

Often, you may be sure, the Unbidden Guest lets 
fall the uplifted latch, turns on his heel and tip-toes 
away, loth to intrude into such merry company. 
Tomorrow will do as well for his errand, or tomor¬ 
row week. And meanwhile he can call elsewhere; 
he has a long visiting list—and sometimes a wel¬ 
come. 

Cartell had fled from one hospital, at the crucial 
moment, in a sudden panic; to the shame of his 
friends, the scorn of the physicians, the scandal 
of the sombre, capouched and wimpled nurses; 
clambered from his bed, squirmed into his clothes, 
tottered to a taxi, bolted the town, and came begging 
shelter here. 

And no reason for his flight that he could after¬ 
wards recall except a colored print of “The Pearly 
Gates,” a shrieking chromo of “The Celestial 
Choir,” and a cubistic Angel Gabriel Blowing his 
Trumpet in worsted-work. These glared at him 
from the walls all the while the head-surgeon and 
the house-physician were assuring him of his prob- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 65, 

able fate tomorrow—‘Yes, he had some sort of a 
kind of a chance’ but they ‘didn’t believe in kidding 
a patient.’ Neither did the pictures. 

No such candor here. Rather old-school in that 
regard. You may die unshriven, if you wait on 
warning from them. Bare-faced cajolery to the 
bitter end. The dread night-before—you’re the 
first on Dr. Fenway’s list in the morning, they tell 
you, and something of a compliment!—the junior 
Fenway brings you the opening number of a detec¬ 
tive serial and says he’ll see that you don’t miss the 
successive numbers from week to week! Then he 
asks where you intend to spend the Summer: tells 
where to get the best cigars in town and the best 
motor-roads down the Valley. Sure you’ll get along 
amiably with your nurses when you come to know 
them—“awfully nice girls’’; his only reference to 
the business actually in hand, until just as he is leav¬ 
ing he turns to remark casually: 

“You know, father was saying at dinner tonight 
he doesn’t think he’ll find this case complicated at 
all.” 

Thanks, past telling!—“But the radiograph they 
took—doesn’t that look rather messy?” 

“O, you can’t always go by the radiograph. It’s 
a good deal like the picture of the moon—all right 
as far as it goes. And, besides, father knows a lot 
of things radiographs never heard of. He often 
fools them.” 


66 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Contrast all that with: “YouVe got some sort of 
a kind of a chance!” 

And yet the reaction of first entrance here had 
been to uneasiness. Could this be a good hospital? 
Nothing like the one from which he had discharged 
himself the day before. Now, th^\t was inescapably 
3 . regular hospital, with all the approved stigmata, 
from the undertaker’s smart though severe Black 
Maria halted shyly in the side street to Wipe Your 
Feet on the sterilized door-mat, and the mingled 
greetings, at the threshold, of formaldehyde and 
gilly.flowers. And, beyond, a long wait in a long 
hall, a long conference in a group of long faces and, 
finally, a long list of questions the crux of which is, 
plainly, where-dO“you-wish-the-remains-sent ? 

Missing, now, all these signs of regularity, you 

wonder if you’ve made the mistake of your life_ 

literally—in changing your lodgings. The bearing 
of the personnel, and all the circumstance, did not 
connote a hospital. ^ Much too gay and debonair. 
These people are either frivolous, case-hardened, 
apathistic, or else—yes, more likely, a festal cele¬ 
bration of some sort today: founder’s birthday, or 
a new ward dedicated, or some exhilarating “sport” 
of anatomy disclosed in the operating-room—two 
appendixes instead of one, or even none at all. A 
trifle like that, he’d often heard, will chirk a hospi¬ 
tal to a merriment incomprehensible to laymen. 

The aged Buttons who carried his suitcase to 


THE CONVALESCENTS 67 

Number Seventy-three remarked the southern ex¬ 
posure of the cubicle as counter-vail to its cramped 
dimensions. ‘Later on, perhaps, there might be 
something better. Lucky, though, to get in at all. 
They were always full-up this time of the year.’ 
(Seems this is the height of the season for urgent 
operations—families being anxious to get the thing 
over with before making their summer plans. The 
Maisons-de-deuil, you may have noticed, make espe¬ 
cially elaborate window-displays about the middle of 
March. 

Presently, at the hour of form, came a tray with 
seed-cakes, cinnamon-toast and fragrant Pekoe. 
And someone whom you’ve never seen before poured 
it; poured it quite as real tea, not as medicine— 
camomile, sage, or cambric—omitting nothing of 
the ice-breaking ritual: “Lemon or cream?” and, 
the tongs poised, “How many lumps?—Do try the 
cinnamon toast.” Then, others you’d never seen 
before, intimates of your sudden hostess, happened 
in: some with the customary: “Can’t stop but a 
moment” and proving it by a swishing exit when 
paged by a fretful jingle of the bell-rack. 

And the reaction of all this pleasantness is a 
curious rage, half peevish, half bitter. . . . Why 
the deuce did all this have to happen? Much too 
nice a world to quit. Perhaps after all, the manner 
of that other hospital was the better-—easing resig¬ 
nation and dulling regret. 

Never would he have noticed there what struck 


68 THE CONVALESCENTS 

him now so accusingly: his shoes in need of a shine! 
And that coat he’s wearing—never did hang right. 
There’s a rip in the lining, too—he suddenly re¬ 
calls. And a nurse—maybe the one who poured 
tea or she who nibbled seed-cakes so bemusedly— 
will see it presently! . . . ‘What of it? Shabby 
boots or coat in tatters, when tomorrow, prob¬ 
ably’ . . . 

Socrates is praised for dying like a philosopher. 
But his hemlock wasn’t served at a tea-party. 


CHAPTER VI 


THE ELOQUENT RETICENCE OF TWO 

IVORY STICKS 

M ISS SAVILE was browsing, lackadaisically, 
through a stale magazine. 

“Eve finished this ‘Lincoln’ book,” Cartell said: 
“Would you care to read it?” 

“Not now,” she answered, “I must keep at this 
sweater”—she picked it up quickly—“Miss New- 
lands will be wanting it.” 

“At your leisure, then,” offering her the volume. 
“Thank you, sir, but I’m not particularly inter¬ 
ested in—history.” 

“This isn’t exactly history. Rather an apology, 
or explanation, of England’s former attitude toward 
Lincoln.” 

He seemed to expect some comment on the belated 
expression of a nation’s repentance. So she said: 
“Yes, sir.” 

“There’s a great run, just now, on ‘Lincoln’ 
books.” 

“Yes, sir. He seems to be quite fashionable.” 
“This English author,” he went on, “thinks Lin¬ 
coln a much greater man than George Washington.” 

69 _ 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


70 

“They thought the same, a while ago, of Mr. 
Wilson,” ^ sprang to her lips. But savored too 
much of argument with the patient, which the rules 
forbade. So again, only: “Yes, sir.” 

As for indicating any real interest, she might just 
as well have said: “No, sir.” 

Dense to her eloquent reticence, and merely to 
make conversation—her voice being pleasant to hear 
—he asked if the Drinkwater play had been done 
here. 

“Oh, yes, indeed! Some thought it quite attrac¬ 
tive.” 

“You didn’t go to see it?” 

No; she was on night-duty that week. Of course 
they gave matinees, but she had to sleep in the after¬ 
noons—or study'—or go to a movie^—or—some¬ 
thing 1 

He should have suspected annoyance from the 
fashed tone of ‘something,’ but—“You’ll find a 
printed copy of the play among those books on the 
table.” 

“Thank you, but I can’t read plays—easily. I 
suppose one must get used to it.—^And speaking of 
Mr. Washington”—whom he had already forgotten 
—“isn’t it only lately the English began to find him 
at all attractive?” 

^With such a man [Wilson] at the helm at home we can do 
whatever we wish to do with the English. No man has been in 
the White House who is so regarded since Lincoln; in fact, they 
didn’t regard Lincoln while he lived .—From a letter of W. H, 
Page, fwhen Ambasjador to England. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 71 

He allowed that since the War there had been, 
perhaps, a somewhat livelier laying-on of hands- 
across-the-sea. 

“Yes, sir. Because we had an English girl here, 
in last year’s class; sent over from Bedford College 
to study American nursing methods. Most attrac¬ 
tive creature'—Girton graduate. But the strangest 
notions about General Washington! Insisted we-all 
in this country knew nothing of his real character: 
that our school-books had deliberately deified him, 
in order to justiTy the Revolution. Why, as a small 
boy, she told us, he was extremely cruel to dumb 
animals. So that the story of the Cherry Tree was 
invented to conceal the actual facts. It wasn’t a 
cherry tree at all that he cut down, she said: it was 
a cat’s tail. His mother’s pet cat’s tail. And she 
had other tales, even more—more-” 

“Apocryphal?” 

“Well, I shouldn’t care to call them that, sir, but 
they were not the sort of stories that you’d naturally 
associate with a Virginia gentleman.” 

“Including,” Cartell guessed, “their dramatic ac¬ 
count of the General’s taking-off?” ^ 

“No, no, she never told us that one,” Miss Savile 
interrupted with suspicious promptness and pre¬ 
science. 

“But, coming back to Lincoln-” 

^This story has long been prevalent in England. The present 
writer had it, richly embellished, from one of the most erudite 
figures of the BritisJi stage. 




72 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“You mustn’t, sir. You’ve talked quite enough 
for so early in the day.” 

Her clicking needles pointed the hint. 

Cartell, still not comprehending,—dull as ditch- 
water, these days, with mental processes about as 
responsive as an omelet-souffle—unpercipient even 
of her plain purpose in diverting the theme, took up 
the book she had declined, and quoted the author’s 
conviction:— 

“The South has long since come to realize that in 
Lincoln they lost their best friend.” 

Miss Savile, absorbed in a mis-stitch, said 
nothing. 

She could say nothing in several languages. Most 
eloquently with two ivory sticks and a skein of yarn. 

. . . Men avoiding answer go on sawing wood. 
Gretchen went on cutting bread-and-butter. Penel¬ 
ope, in ancient epic, twiddled her tapestries. Her 
sister, in modern novel, goes on munching marrons., 

These young women keep on knitting sweaters.* 
Which they never wear—not their own, at any rate. 
Miss Savile, working for weeks in old-rose, appears 
one day in fire-fly-green with which Miss Newlands 
had been occupied for the same period. And the 
latter cosies in the burnt-orange wrought by Miss 
Conde, who looks very well in Miss Savile’s pinkish 
achievement. So the juggle went on, through the 
entire class, as though some kind of game j for as 
soon as there’d been a complete shift of jerseys all 
around, they at once began new ones. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 73 

Skethway, a jockey who lately joined the Porch 
Club—his mount had thrown him from Pimlico into 
a Gatch-bed for a month—got to thinking of the 
polychromatic yarns as racing-silks and made a mind- 
book on how the colours would show—that is, who 
would wear which. He lost every bet. 

Miss Savile’s silence piqued Cartell’s curiosity— 
prodded a doodle brain-cell—and out popped the 
question: 

“Lincoln did mean well by the South, didn’t he?” 

“No, he didn’t!” flashed back the answer, with 
enough temper to startle him. Sensing his blunder, 
he tried to edge out: 

“Well, at any rate, after the war?” 

“No, never, never—he never meant well by the 
South 1 And they all may go on writing books from 
now to Doomsday, but they’ll never make us believe 
—I beg your pardon, sir, and we’re forbidden ever 
to argue with a patient about anything under the 
sun, but if you knew how much—^how dreadfully— 
you do need a shave, sir. Pll go fetch the barber— 
and he must trim your hair today.” 

“O, let it go till next time.” 

“Certainly not, sir. Miss Allyn will be calling 
this afternoon. She ’phoned early this morning that 
she’d be here, and bring your friend, Mr.—Jerome? 
—Pm-afraidj-sir”—between downward flicks of the 
thermometer—“that you’re having—too much— 
unnecessary —company!” And she scored the adjec- 


74 the convalescents 

tive by a particularly violent thrust of the instru¬ 
ment. 

Cartell had come to read Miss Savile’s moods and 
tempers as clearly as she read his temperature. . . . 
Had there been a scene with Miss Beaux, the super¬ 
intendent; or with Harley, the dressing-surgeon, kept 
waiting for sleepy-patients. Had she danced the 
evening before and gone to the play, or been kept in 
by ‘those horrid, old examination-papers.’ Had 
she dined well today, at the nurse’s-tabk'—roast-beef 
’stead of messy goulasch,—ice-cream-meringue for 
dessert ’stead of those ‘same-old-stewed-prunes’ or, 
au-choix, Brown-Betty—Miss Savile herself gave no 
sign. But the thermometer—the way she hurled the 
mercury to the bottom of the tube! 

And all the while Tony, the barber, was telling 
Cartell what he—and plenty other barbers, too— 
believe-a-me!—still-a thought of Pres’den’ Weelson, 
slashing simultaneously at Cartell’s hair and the 
Peace-a-League and the high cost of barbers’-sup- 
plies—“bay-rum—capper!!—an’ frizerine an’ the 
weetcha-hazel like-a they was-a the fine’s Lacrima- 
Christ’-Spumante”—through Cartell’s mind ran a 
series of names and dates; Sumter—Shiloh— 
Gettysburg'— Richmond — Appomattox — and on 
down from ’65 through faded Presidencies up to the 
vivid Restoration. Began and finished, the tragedy, 
decades before the girl was born—he was thinking— 
and she still remembers! 

“How you think-a, Signor?” asked the barber 


THE CONVALESCENTS 75 

whose blame of the Virginian had now jumped from 
frizerine to Fiume—“You no think-a, Signor?” 

“Yes, yes, Tony. They are a different race. ‘East 
is East and West is West’ is only half the story. 
North is North and South is South—and, on that 
one point at least, never yet the twain have met— 
whatever they may do at Fiume—eh, Tony?” 

“Si, si. Signor—’zactamente lak’ d’Annunzio 
say!” Tony assented, so pleased he gave an actual 
spurt of weetcha-hazel, not the mere gesture as 
heretofore. 

A smile of auspice—if you but knew it! Your 
chances have improved, decisively. Tony has been 
told so, just now, by the nurse, with sharp hint for 
improvement on his part, too. “Scissors, today— 
not horse-clips.” 

Regularly, the hospital-barber works in a spirit of 
frank pessimism. “You probably won’t need 
another hair-cut,” his usual manner says. Those 
razor “nicks” he’s giving you—neck, cheek and ear 
—“No one will ever see them where you’re going.” 
Even, he doesn’t mention his hair-tonic. 


CHAPTER VII 


A LESSON IN SICK-ROOM DEPORTMENT 

I N HER quality of fiancee to a patient Margot 
was of more than common interest to the nurses. 
Any visitor in similar circumstance would be. The 
savor of romance seems to be peculiarly grateful to 
them. They sense the attar in its faintest Incipience, 
and tend the bud with zeal and skill until it reaches 
fullest flower, or wilts—as may happen—In the frost 
of relentless charts. A case that first sprouts under 
their eye they follow up with academic concern, as 
though to complete the record. A theory is in¬ 
volved; at least a guild-tradition: ‘Matches are 
made in heaven'—parlor-matches, many of them that 
flare brilliantly for a second, then sputter out; but 
the matches that burn steadily to the end—the fusee 
kind that won’t blow out in a storm—those matches 
are made In hospitals.’ 

A tragic finish doesn’t necessarily kill their Inter¬ 
est: ensures, rather, fond recollection. A case that 
knowing the end to be near and certain Insists on a 
bed-side marriage—at midnight preferably—is sure 
to be pleasantly remembered. . . . ‘Miss Allyn, 
with her high color and curt looks, would certainly 

76 


THE CONVALESCENTS 77 

look well in weeds’—‘Yes, and she’d be keen to try 
them’-—the Bishop’s daughter opined—‘for a month 
or two, anyway.’ 

Margot had exacted a promise, both from Miss 
Newlands and Miss Savile, to summon her from 
New York by ’phone at the first sign of a really bad 
turn. Two or three times, in the earlier weeks, 
anticipation keeping pace with the patient’s tem¬ 
perature ran high; but luck and Carrel-Dakin inter¬ 
vened to prevent the diversion. Much to the satis¬ 
faction of Miss Beaux who hated anything “sensa¬ 
tional” in connection with B. M. H.: “And*it will 
get into the newspapers—that sort of thing!” 

Lessening chance each day now of any such 
development. Of course you never can tell with 
absolute certitude; but just before Margot’s arrival 
Miss Savile was saying, in the chart-room, with 
quite an air of authority and some professional 
pride: 

“Number Seventy-Three is certainly getting on!” 

“Well, he’d best be quick about it,” a soft brogue 
advised, “or by the time he gets out he’ll be Number 
Twenty-three.” 

“Bosh, Killarneyl Any one can see Miss Allyn’s 
devotion.” 

“Sure you can. She brings him along every time 
she calls here.” 

“Not every time,” Sandra contradicted, “if you 
mean Mr. Jerome.” 


78 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“If that’s the name—of Number One. Attrac¬ 
tive, too, isn’t he?” 

“And my patient always enjoys their visits. I 
take care to notice.” 

“Take his pulse next time,” Killarney laughed: 
“You owe it to your patient, Sandra.” 

Today’s visit, however, denied trial to the jesting 
advice. Margot arrived alone, without the usual 
escort—as Miss Savile had intimated. 

Her manner with the patient was a lesson in sick¬ 
room deportment. Here she abandoned all set 
forms; turned intensely individual, original, bizarre. 
Disdained every “accepted” phrase and spirit of 
such occasion—the ordered inquiries as to state of 
health, the trite and frank mendacities of appear¬ 
ance. Either she had no ken of human ill-being or 
concealed it most cleverly. Inspiriting it was, too— 
her light, off-hand greeting of him—quite as though 
an agreeable acquaintance she’d happened on at the 
street-corner or soda-fountain. 

Fell at once upon subjects wholly unrelated to the 
immediate conditions:— 

“Are you up to a good laugh?” 

“I’ll risk it.” 

“Whom do you suppose I saw at the Hunt Club 
last night?—Three guesses!” 

“Miss Savile.” 

“Now how’d you happen to think of her, first 
off?” 

“She happened to mention the dance, yesterday.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 79 

“Tacky thing to talk about to a man as sick as 
you are. I suppose, though, as time goes on, they 
will get chatty.’’ 

“Part of the job, Margot: lest we forget there are 
still cakes-and-ale, outside.” 

“She told you, of course, that I spoke with her?” 

“No.” Nor that she’d seen Miss Allyn. In fact, 
had said nothing of the dance today. 

“Discreet little owl, isn’t she?” 

Also part of the job, he supposed. “But she’s 
been more than ordinarily reserved this morning.” 

“Still half-asleep, probably.” 

Seems fairly chipper, he said, on some subjects. 
“Able to do a lot of knitting.” 

“But I thought they had to be in by ten o’clock, 
always.” 

There are special dispensations, he believed, for 
dances. 

“For their clothes, too, I’d imagine. You should 
have seen her! You’d never take her for the demure 
prunes-and-prisms creature in blue-gingham. AH 
lit up—in turquoise charmeuse—newest model, too 
—quite extreme—like a smart little mannequin on 
parade. It was funny!” 

He didn’t rise to the humour; so she elaborated 
the picture. 

“And all the men seemed crazy to dance with her; 
cut in on one another outrageously. You’d have 
laughed to see that I And the way she dances'—quite 


8o THE CONVALESCENTS 

like a professional! Where do you suppose she 
picked it up—with all her exacting duties here?” 

Southern women, he had heard, were, naturally, 
good dancers. 

“Yes, but there’s a limit. One isn’t supposed to 
dance like a girl in the Follies—not a nurse at any 
rate—and dancing her head off I That struck one as 
particularly funny.” 

Somehow it didn’t strike him as funny: the picture 
of Miss Savile, ‘dancing her head off’ in ‘extreme’ 
gown, tossed about from one partner to another— 
and ‘all crazy to dance with her.’ 

None of his business, of course! Ridiculous even 
to think about it! Why shouldn’t she? These girls 
—some of ’em—would eat their hearts out, if they 
didn’t dance their heads off occasionally. 

And yet, somehow, he couldn’t get the fun of it— 
as Margot did. 

Must have shown it, too, from her next remark: 

“I believe you’re jealous.” 

“That is funny!” And this time he did laugh. 

“Well, if you’d seen the look on your face just 
now—” 

His glance went to the dresser-mirror across the 
room. 

“That’s a pretty thing to get jealous—over any 
woman—like Miss Savile.—By the way, have you 
noticed her resemblance to-” 

“O, I suppose you’re going to say Elsie Ferguson, 
or Ann Pennington or Joan of Arc.” 



THE CONVALESCENTS 8i 

He promptly withdrew the Greuze painting from 
the conversation. 

“Jerry says he hopes, for your sake, that she’s 
wiser than she looks.” 

“She isn’t,” Cartell said enigmatically. “Case 
doesn’t require it.—A patient takes alarm if the 
nurse appears to be hiding something behind a de¬ 
ceptive mask.^—Miss Savile is just as she looks.” 

“How can you know what she’s really like?— 
Wait till you’ve seen her—as I did, last night—out 
of that tricky uniform. A very different story, off 
parade—I’ll tell the world! Jerry—eh—eh— 
Mister Jerome was telling me of a case they had in 
the house; his young brother—Jack—all het-up over 
the parlour-maid; dippy, drooling dippy over the 
creature. His mother was utterly sick for fear he’d 
marry her; kept the girl so she could keep an eye on 
her. And on the girl’s day out Mrs. Jerome always 
got a heart-attack and wouldn’t let Jack leave the 
house. But one night he sneaked the girl out to a 
Ritz dinner and a show, and came home completely 
cured. Just because he’d seen the hussy in street- 
clothes without her cap and apron.” 

The nurse came in to confirm a list of errands on 
which she was starting:—“Bank—tobacco—maga¬ 
zines—shaving-brush—pumps—pajamas. — Think 
of anything else, sir?” 

She really needn’t bother with all that—Margot 
interrupted sweetly: “You must be dead-beat'— 


82 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


after last night. I didn’t expect to see you here. I 
thought surely this must be your day off.” 

“We are not having days off at present.” 

“But, you poor child, you must be all-in. You 
look It, too.” 

“I hope the patient hasn’t noticed any marked 
change.” 

He did, now. She wore, for the street, a tailored- 
suit of tan cloth: gloves and shoes of suede to match; 
the hat, of the same stuff as the dress, and made 
sailor-fashion, accented most of all the contrast with 
the nurse’s costume. Margot was right: a very dif¬ 
ferent story, ‘off parade.’ 

“But I noticed you didn’t miss a dance last night, 
and never refused a cut-in. And when I left—quite 
half-past two—you were still going strong.” 

“I can stand a lot of dancing.” 

“Yes, you must—and still be fit for your duties 
here.” 

They generally managed, somehow, the nurse 
said, to combine the two. 

“Well, I hope you didn’t oversleep, and miss your 
breakfast. Some ungodly hour, isn’t it?” 

“Seven o’clock. But I had mine long before— 
about five. We stopped dancing then for ham-and- 
eggs, pop-overs and coffee. Some of us always wait 
for the pop-overs. They’re most attractive!—I 
brought some home for Mr. Cartell’s breakfast, but 
they flopped disgracefully.—The hall-nurse will 


THE CONVALESCENTS 83 

watch your bell, sir,” she advised him. “And I 
won’t be long.” 

“Thank you!” he said, with much more meaning 
than he intended. 

His glance followed her beyond the door. 

“Well?” Miss Allyn recalled him: “What did I 
tell you?” 

“Yes. Astonishing, isn’t it?” 

“You’d hardly recognize her for the same girl, 
would you?” 

“No. The uniform does make a difference.'— 
She’s a dream in street-clothes!” 

As Margot was leaving, Mrs. Moncrieff came in 
for a quick word of cheer to the patient: she had to 
hurry down to the banking-district, before it quit for 
the day. Margot promptly offered a lift. She was 
going in that direction: “Mr. Jerome was good 
enough to send his car.” 

“Last I heard, he was in Havana,” Mrs. Mon¬ 
crieff said, rather tartly. 

“No, he’s returned for the races. I met him on 
the train, this morning. He meant to come along, 
today,”—she told Cartell. 

“So you ’phoned.” 

“Yes—but that bossy little nurse said not to. Is 
that part of the job—to regulate the patient’s visit¬ 
ing-list.” 

“Much is left to their discretion,” Mrs. Moncrieff 


84 THE CONVALESCENTS 

answered. “Must be, my dear; so many visitors 
have none.” 

In the car the elder woman scarcely noticed her 
companion’s presence. She was quite engrossed In 
conversation—now with someone on the running- 
board, now with herself; a tempestuous scene, evi¬ 
dently, from the repeated toss of her head and the 
swift-moving lips. 

There’d been a troubled meeting of the Board of 
Directors: the usual anxious discussion of the hospi¬ 
tal’s finances. Some costly repairs and renovations 
were needed, and the funds lacking. 

Mrs. Comley-Draycott cut the debate, rather Im¬ 
patiently—she had to run away to an engagement— 
by telling them to go ahead with the work, and 
she’d pay for it out of her own pocket. 

No, no, the Board wouldn’t hear of it!—‘You’re 
always doing that sort of thing, my dear, and it 
isn’t fair, nor business-like.’ 

‘Pooh I What does the whole thing amount to— 
eight or ten thousand dollars?’ 

‘Not over six,’ they told her. 

‘O, ’tisn’t worth talking about,—Have the job 
done—the house does look shabby—and send the 
bill to me.’ 

Moment she’d gone the Board voted to defer the 
repairs until the money was In hand; they couldn’t 
act on Mrs. Comley-Draycott’s generous offer; 
wasn’t business-like. They had done so on several 
occasions and- 



THE CONVALESCENTS 85 

The lady was far the wealthiest member of the 
Board, and famously extravagant.—The emerald 
brooch she wore today had been the Empress 
Eugenie’s: the pink-pearl ring Mrs. Burdett-Coutts’. 
She had, too, the longest string of pierced diamonds 
south of the Hudson river and, possibly, the shortest 
memory. When the Board was at wit-ends, awhile 
ago, for a new wing, she ordered an architect, on 
her own account, to go ahead with the plans; and 
the contractors to go ahead with the estimates; and 
then she’d gone ahead to Europe. In such slight 
matters as painters, plumbers, carpenters, new am¬ 
bulances, she was, of course, utterly prodigal; but so 
absent-minded! Hence today’s decision of the 
Board, and Mrs. Moncrieff’s hurried “drive” in the 
banking district. 


Cuddled in a corner of the velvet-wheeling van, 
Margot remarked its splendours with sigh of luxuri¬ 
ous content: 

“This man does have the nicest cars!” 

“Good lord! You wouldn’t throw him over on 
that account, would you?” 

“I’m not likely to get the chance—under the cir¬ 
cumstances. He couldn’t—decently—ask me.” 
^^Askf—Whor 

“Why—why—I thought you meant-” 

“Yes—and you ought to be spanked for thinking 
of it!” 



86 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

“But I’m not —really. You don’t suppose I’d do 
anything as rotten as that?” 

“No. That would be the limit, even for an arma¬ 
dillo—or dasypus-villosus, to put it mildly.” 

“Don’t trouble on my account. But, really, if he’s 
going to be an invalid-” 

“He isn’t going to be. Doctor Hampden just 
told me. He’ll either get well or he—won’t.” 

“Let’s hope so! Still, It’ll be a long time—a year, 
anyway—^before he’s fully recovered.” 

“He’ll be out of his cage in a month. And you’ll 
see how he’ll pick up, in the woods.” 

“Yes, but, mother says that after what he’s gone 
through, we can’t be quite certain that he’ll ever be 
a very strong man. And under the circumstances 
I’m not sure I ought to marry him.” 

“No! Not If you’re looking for a hammer- 
thrower or a cow-puncher.” 

They rode for some time In silence; then Margot 
observed: “I believe that nurse Is rather Interested 
in him.” 

“Don’t be yakklsh! A girl like that doesn’t take 
to a scare-crow.” 

“He Isn’t even that.” Margot sighed: “Doesn’t 
look strong enough to frighten dickey-birds. Still, 
one can understand how the constant associa¬ 
tion-” 

“Precisely,” Mrs. Moncrieff snapped: “You, 
who’ve never seen him,—^tlll now,—except at his 
best—fall out of love with him—oh, you can’t help 




THE CONVALESCENTS 87 

it!—and yet think this nurse who sees him only at 
his worst—worn to a bone-rack—and he can’t hide 
it from her!—you think she’s fallen in! That’s 
against all reason and nature—like the Australian 
ornithorhynchus.” 

“Well, at any rate, he’s interested in her.” 

“I hope to heaven he is—now that you’re going to 
throw him over.” 

“I haven’t the remotest intention'—at this mo¬ 
ment.” 

“Bah! I’m not an old bat that blinks in the 
daylight—and I’m not going to play ostrich and 
pretend not to see. ... I don’t ask you to be an 
apterdyx—or is it phoenix?—that fire-insurance bird 
that consumes itself in sacrificial flames when its mate 
dies. What you’re doing is quite natural; most of 
the females ’mong the lower animals behave just 
that way when the mate sickens. Though in my 
stories I always have ’em stick around ’till the very 
end, seeing that I write for very young people. But 
do, please, let him down easy, by degrees. Wait 
until he’s fed up enough to stand the shock. And, 
meanwhile, when you call to see him, tie your giraffe 
outside.” 

“ ‘Giraffe’?” 

“Of course, Jerome can’t help having a neck like 
that; but he needn’t wear those high collars that 
always make me think of a camelopard poking his 
head out of the top of a circus-wagon. ’Tisn’t neces¬ 
sary and ’tisn’t decent. I mean your always bringing 


88 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


him along—as you planned today—when you come 
on these sleep-in-peace visits to the hospital. The 
only animal that does that sort of thing brazenly is 
a species of hyena in Abyssinia—the Hyana Striata, 
When its mate gets wabbly the female immediately 
sets up a yowl for his successor, and the two of them 
take up the death-watch, grinning from head to tail 
•—which the departing male doubtless takes for the 
merry ha-ha.” 

To which the young woman retorted that the 
Abyssinians were doubtless following a perfectly 
natural instinct of eugenics, besides showing a very 
sensible attitude toward life in general. 

“Anyway,” she challenged, “that’s how I feel 
about such things. Life, to my notion, is a good 
deal like restaurants; the chic ones don’t serve half¬ 
portions.—^And if a man chooses to be an invalid,” 
she would insist, “he really ought to marry a nurse. 
Mother thinks it would be marvelous for him— 
positively.” 

“But not for the nurse, thank mother kindly. 
Miss Savile, I imagine, has other plans. And I 
can’t see her attached to a confirmed wheel-chair. 
’Tisn’t done at B. M. H. All the hospital mar¬ 
riages of my observation started as going concerns 
and kept it up. When a nurse marries her case you 
may be sure he’s what the insurance-folks call a 
first-class risk.” 

Addressing, then, society at large rather than 
her immediate neighbor, Mrs. Moncrieff advised 


THE CONVALESCENTS 89 

that any patient, dubious of his eventual restoration, 
propose marriage to his nurse: “If she answer 
‘yes,’ he may take it confidently, even against the 
consensus of the faculty, for the last word in favor¬ 
able prognosis. She knows 1 ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE MAN WHO WOULDN’T WAIT ON 

BROADWAY 

A UNIQUE factor in the inner life of this unique 
hospital—one of its intimate traditions passed 
on from class to class by word of mouth, as with 
Homeric epic—was Captain Jim’s dress-suit. There 
was, of course, no official recognition of the anom¬ 
aly; but its existence was a matter of general knowl¬ 
edge and, in some quarters, of proper pride. 

He was, in the far-flung hospital circles of the 
town, the only man of his station who regularly 
donned evening clothes on his night ‘off. In living 
memory he had never changed the custom nor the 
cut of the coat which bore, on the inside breast¬ 
pocket, the arms of a family of “artist-tailors,” 
famous in New York even before Mrs. Wharton’s 
age-of-innocence. No heavy alien hand had ever 
sullied the lines of the chef-d’oeuvre. The velvet 
collar and cuffs had been renewed from time to time; 
the cloth of the lapels replaced, latterly, by satins; 
but such restorations were done always in the atelier 
of its origin, by pere, fils and grand-fils successively. 
There, too, it was sent twice each year, just before 


THE CONVALESCENTS 91 

the opera season and the Graduation, for pressing. 

Though Cartell had been told the legend, he 
stared bewildered at the picturesque figure that 
walked in, unushered and unannounced, a capacious 
Inverness over his left arm, a crush-hat under his 
right. Not until the man spoke did he recognize 
the seeming stranger for Captain Jim, whom till 
now he’d seen only in the white duck of an orderly. 

“I’m off this evening, sir, to the play—a new one. 
If you like. I’ll look in on my return, and tell you 
of It.” 

“By all means. Captain.—I’ve been told you never 
miss a first-night at the theatre.” 

“Not If my duties here permit, sir.” 

“I notice that quite a number of new plays are 
announced for the first production here.” 

“Always at this season, sir; and, indeed, through¬ 
out the year. It Is one of the charms of the city— 
these numerous ‘try-outs’; but slightly appreciated, I 
regret to say—very slightly I Many persons resent 
it as unconstitutional on the part of the metropolitan 
managers; object to being made the goat, as they 
term It. An advantage, I call It, constitutional ad¬ 
vantage. It enables one to judge a play without the 
bias of metropolitan vogue, and before reading 
what the New York critics say. Most persons, here, 
choose to wait on Broadway. Personally, I prefer 
being the goat to a sheep.” 

Cartell recalled hearing somewhere—from Mrs. 
Moncrieff, but he’d forgotten—^that a like sentiment 


92 THE CONVALESCENTS 

regarding the theatre prevailed in the medical cir¬ 
cles of the community. 

Yes, they are naturally venturesome, the Captain 
confirmed; the temperament of their profession. 
“But outside their circle the prevalent spirit is con¬ 
servative, radically conservative. 

“Best mayor this town ever had”—he went on, 
rather to himself—“ best any town—was put out of 
office because he wasn^t conservative—with our cob¬ 
blestones and Rogers-style statues and keep-off-the- 
grass signs in the parks. . . . Trouble is, sir, some 
folks confuse conservatism with—catalepsy.” 

When the Captain looked in, keeping promise to 
tell of the play, it must have been, presumably, near 
midnight. In some hospitals a social call at such 
hour might be irregular, even eccentric. Not so at 
B. M. H. 

That was one of the precious idiosyncrasies of 
the Hospital—the “hours;” there were none. When 
dared too far, the hall-clock discreetly hid its face; 
its hands withheld nothing from the vagaries of a 
patient. If he fancied his supper about the same 
time the doctors took theirs: or if, disdaining the 
loneliness of sleep, he begged a round of “rum”— 
the night-watch played gooseberry. 

“Jim” Forrester's brevet-title, in the roster of the 
hospital, was Librarian. Half-a-score book-cases 
had filled, in the passing of time and patients, with 
a motley collection of novels and magazines, most 
of them old enough to comport sociably with the 


THE CONVALESCENTS 93 

horse-hair sofa and rockers, the argand drop-light 
on the marble-topped table of walnut, the steel- 
engravings of “The Death of the Stag,” “Hippoc¬ 
rates Refusing the Gifts of Artaxerxes,” mezzo¬ 
tints of “The Melton Hunt-Breakfast,” “Martha 
Washington” and “The Brighton Mail-Coach” that 
furnished the little room. Wardship of this random 
farrage made Forrester Librarian. Certain dow¬ 
agers of the Board of Directors chose to address 
him, on occasion, as Professor ; and so, too, did some 
of the student-nurses until they got the hang of 
things. Then they fell in with the common custom, 
and called him Captain. 

He might easily have been Captain, one time or 
another, from his military bearing and the strict 
discipline with which he directed the orderlies. For 
that, too, was among his manifold offices. In the 
operating room, attendant to the surgeons, he 
evinced such quickness, surety, aptness that one 
might think he had, sometime or other, studied the 
craft. Indeed, there was belief, among the humbler 
service, that the Captain could be trusted, in a pinch, 
with a broken leg or appendix. 

His handy-andy uses, his Crichton-rise to an emer¬ 
gency, had summed to a maxim: “In a jam, call 
Jim.” When need was he ran the elevator, drove 
the ambulance, repaired the plumbing, quieted 
thumping radiators and comforted the home-sick in 
the children’s ward. This last was his especial de¬ 
light. You could always tell the Captain was there 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


94 

by the shouts of laughter and jumps of jollity on the 
top-floor; particularly on his pay-day or when they 
were running well for him at Pimlico or Havre-de- 
Grace. 

Each successive class had its own version of the 
romance. As time went on the Captain rallied a 
procession of misty figures from history, legend and 
fancy. Long ago he was the posthumous son of 
Aaron Burr. Then, by daring invention, of Mor¬ 
gan, the free-mason who talked too ijiuch in his sleep 
to a garrulous wife. There came a class that whis¬ 
pered: ^John Wilkes Booth’! 

Fancy in lighter vein broke the Captain’s heart 
over Jenny Lind or Adelina Patti, Lydia Thompson, 
Nellie Lingard, or a dancing-girl in “The Black 
Crook.” Only the element of time saved him from 
the woes of the Dauphin, The Iron Mask, or the 
arms of Catherine of Russia. More recent romance, 
losing courage and cunning, gave him a college- 
diploma —summa am laude —and drove him to 
drink. Whereby the world lost a possible Greek- 
professor and won a dandy orderly. 

His language bespoke precise education, save in 
the case of one word which he threw into comment 
quite carelessly and confusingly: hit-or-miss, as 
though ignorant of its meaning but liking the sound 
of the word. So that one might incline to believe 
that the Captain had been, sometime or other, a 
“constitutional” lawyer. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 95 

On rare occasions he had been almost persuaded 
to break his long silence, but never got far beyond 
—“Years ago, long before I came here”-—Then 
he’d break off abruptly: 

“No, no! La commedia e finita!” and hum the 
final bars of “Pagliacci.” 

He had, in rumour, rich relations and an allow¬ 
ance. He had, in fact, something pleasant and reli¬ 
able : a peculiarly nice sense of values in a race-horse 
and the close study of pedigree, form and perform¬ 
ance. 

This knowledge he would share generously with 
the entire personnel of the hospital and with pa¬ 
tients of whom the nurses gave pleasant report. 
Despite the modesty of his wagers, his appearance 
In the betting-ring always flurried the talent and 
caused a shift In the odds. Certain book-makers 
paled at the sight of what they called “hospital- 
money.” There were bitter memories of some of 
the Captain’s uncanny parleys. With “tips,’^ 
“hunches,” even “stable Information,” he would not 
traffic: dismissed them as “unconstitutional.” The 
which, altogether, enabled him to keep his state In a 
comfortable cottage, with well-tended close, hard- 
by the hospital: to smoke cigars defiant of Trusts: 
to have his clothes pressed by a student of the Bell’s: 
to secure his declining years against the devices of 
Mr. Volstead, whom he declared utterly “unconsti¬ 
tutional.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


96 

From his office of Librarian, a delicate responsi¬ 
bility fell on Forrester: the choice of reading-matter 
for the patients. 

In the public wards, peopled mainly from the 
ruder walks, the problem was simple enough. Truck¬ 
men, dock-workers, car-drivers, street-pavers; scrub¬ 
women, factory-girls, candy-wrappers, an occasional 
fizgig salvaged from the street—for these the elder 
classics sufficed: Dickens, Thackeray, Walter Scott, 
“Monte Cristo,” Kipling, Sherlock Holmes. . . . 
But the private rooms required other fare and 
handling. There Forrester confronted the politer 
wits of the well-to-do; persons of ease and, often, of 
ennui; tastes polished by learning and tempered by 
sophistication. These, of course, called for the 
literature of the hour. To meet their demand and 
yet avoid all possible complications of neurosis or 
psychosis, was a nice business. 

Forrester, modest of his own literary judgment, 
took guidance from the house-physicians. To them 
he submitted the calls of the convalescents; almost 
always for some sensation of the moment, most of 
which came to the Library by gift or abandonment. 

These critical clinics made a refreshlns: finish to 
the day’s work; were as a savoury to the midnight- 
supper, where, even without that, the staff did them¬ 
selves very well. 

Mostly, their minds were single to their calling, 
diverting never or rarely to subjects unrelated to 
their work. And then only for sheer distraction. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 97 

They read, yes, almost anything and everything that 
fell to hand; but with half-an-eye, skippingly, at odd 
moments between charts, patients, rounds and 
watches. 

Their taste in books, as in the theatre, was for 
the lightsome. They loathed the morbid; suspected 
a mental lesion in the author. Such a tale as “He 
Reached for the Moon”- 

“How the deuce did that get in the house?” 
Kreweson demanded. 

“Number Thirty-nine brought it in—man who 
tries to jump out the window.” 

“No wonder—after reading that I” 

Forrester was sorry: the patient particularly 
wanted something by that author. 

“No other work of his in the library?” 

“Yes,” after a moment’s reflection, “we have his 
‘Shackles’ ”—and he turned to Doctor Braxton in¬ 
quiringly. 

“Fine!—up to the last chapter. Then the hero, 
having a minute to spare, seduces the daughter of 
his one faithful friend—man who saved him from 
the gutter. . . . And they say the English have no 
sense of humour!” 

By ordinary, and by tacit accord. Doctor Braxton 
took headship of these reviews. Author himself, in 
a way, his work on “Gynaecology” ranking with 
Inchcape’s and Playfair’s. He alone of the staff 
chased the literary may-flies as they rose, possibly 
relating them, somewise, to the subject in which he 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


98 

Specialized. . . . He didn’t have to go deep Into a 
book to know what was inside; any more than he had 
to^—well, often he could tell from a glance at the 
“jacket,” or some such external. Thus, now, to 
Forrester bringing for judgment the novel of the 
hour and displaying the frontispiece: A Bedouin, 
lance couched, astride Schreyer’s eternal gray mare; 
In the middle-distance a minaret, a prayer-rug, a 
trencher of couscous under a date-palm; on the hori¬ 
zon-line, a brooding dromedary. 

Braxton squinted the tropic glare, and snorted: 

“Yes, I know It. One of those sex-sIroccos. 
Starts at Shepheard’s Hotel, of course, on the ter¬ 
race—they all do ; goes crazy with the heat In the 
Desert, and swoons out In Biskra, kissing a camel.— 
In the discard. Captain.” 

Timidly the librarian demurred there were eager 
requests for the book. 

“Nothing doing here, tell them. Better wait till 
they get out for that sort of thing.” 

A patient had asked for a sea-story: Forrester 
was thinking, from the title, to offer “Mare Nos¬ 
trum”— 

“Y-e-s, perhaps—but that’s no sea-story. It’s a 
woman.—Whole book,” to his colleagues, “about 
one woman—and a kiss. Page after page smeared 
with one kiss.” 

His literary decrees, regularly, went unques¬ 
tioned; but now there was surprise, at least, when he 



THE CONVALESCENTS 99 

sealed the mooted “Gherkins” with: “Yes, Captain, 
that one’s all right.” 

“ ‘Gherkins’—all right!” protested Harley. 

“Ever read it?” 

Tried to—mighty hard .—You read it?” 

“No—but—that copy’s priceless! Book was 
suppressed, you know, by the authorities—^^day after 
it was published.” 

“Day before, probably. Don’t see how they ever 
managed it. Took some wire-pulling to get that 
suppressed. ’Bout as naughty as pink pop.” 

He made short work of “Corn-Silk”—a tale of 
the Middle-West—the novelist’s nympheum at the 
moment:—“Madame Bovary, on the banks of the 
Wabash,” his only comment. 

An honest but engaging document in which Hymen 
is stripped, tarred-and-feathered, rail-ridden, and 
then smothered in the horse-pond —that he advised 
the Librarian should circulate only to the married 
patients or the very aged. “And, above all. Captain, 
keep it out of the public wards.” 

“Tilly of the Toll-Gate,” though a stranger, 
caught his fancy, with the title’s promise of a rustic 
Cinderella under harvest-moons. Then he noted the 
sub-title: 

“ ‘An Unblenching Study of Feminine Psychol¬ 
ogy.’—That’s enough,” he growled, and tossed it 
aside. 

If from these critiques you put him down—or up 
—for puritan you miss your guess. His creed of 


> 


100 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


letters might seem ascetic: but his philosophy of life 
was not the least so, nor even acescent. At the 
Graduation Dance, presently, you will see him shake 
a heel lively as the best of them; he keened now the 
passing of claret from the Doctors’ table; his work 
on “Gynaecology” has a good word to say for the 
seraglio—not of endorsing but of understanding. 
He would deny, and hotly, that the books he banned 
were ‘immoral.’ It was simply, he’d contend, that 
they dealt with something not meant to write about 
nor talk about nor think about: but only to do! 


CHAPTER IX 


THE PSYCHOSIS OF DOUGHNUTS AT 

MIDNIGHT 


A FRIEND asked Pierre Lorillard—the D’Or- 
say of his hour—how much a man should 
have to get along comfortably. 

“A thousand dollars a day,” he answered—“and 
expenses.” 

That—the scale enlarged, of course'—would be 
the ideal endowment of a great hospital. None has 
ever attained it. Wouldn’t recognize it if they saw 
it. Wouldn’t be satisfied anyway—not a really great 
hospital. One of that quality always seeks more, 
needs more, spends more. The hospital with a 
sleeping-surplus has sleeping-sickness. Wanting 
nothing, it wants most. 

B. M. H. lived up to the proud tradition of its 
caste. Income was always short-of-breath, trying to 
keep up with out-go. At times the strain may have 
been heart-breaking; but the secret was kept in the 
family. No patient ever guessed it. Yes, most of 
the furnishings were late Victorian and early Grand- 
Rapids, but that gave the place its peculiarly home¬ 
like aspect. The archaic solidity of the structure 

lOI 


102 THE CONVALESCENTS 

secured It against the easy Intrusion of “modern 
conveniences,” thereby preserving its distinguished 
air of serenity and luxury. Reminded, rather, of 
one of those ancient inns, beautifully out of repair, 
conducted by the same family for generations, and 
where the entertainment within contrasts so amaz¬ 
ingly with the show without. 

The polite prodigality of the menage recalled 
that Southern President who maintained open-board 
at the White House and described himself as “living 
In magnificent bankruptcy.” That, perhaps, a pa¬ 
tient might have suspected from the meal-trays. 
Only, he came to believe, gradually, that Magic ran 
the place: not economics. 

Service was table d’hote, a la carte, grill or buffet; 
and the dining-car was never side-tracked. When 
the marketing fell short. Magic stepped in—any 
time. 

Tonight, for Instance, long after the doctors’- 
table had utterly exhausted the larder. Miss New- 
lands opened the door of the completely empty Ice¬ 
box, and out flew a roast chicken, flanked by a covey 
of hors-d oeuvres—olives, celery, shrimps, saucls- 
son-de-Bologne, radishes, cucumbers—and pursued 
by a salade-gambetta. Then, shoving for place on 
the tray, came Ice-cream, eclairs, macaroons, and 
finally, a punnet of Homburgs; not only the black 
Colmars, the rare white Alexandrines, but the once- 
in-a-blue-moon Akbars. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 103 

‘Impossible! Not to be had at this season, for 
love or money 1’ 

No, nor for anything else but Magic! 

And why doubt that? You’ve seen a Keller, 
Thurston, even a pagan Wu, draw a litter of rabbits, 
a mess of trout, a boiled ham, from a top-hat, and 
merely to amuse an idling throng. Now, why should 
Magic fail an earnest nurse and the capricious hun¬ 
ger of the helpless sick? 

Dietetics, in the practice of Miss Newlands, was 
an exact science, adamant as trigonometry. She ad¬ 
hered rigidly to the system of the great Doctor 
Abernethy, which he deduced and formulated from 
forty years of brilliant, crusty service to mankind. 

“Tell me, doctor,” a patient asked—“what should 
I eat?” 

“How the devil can I tell you that?” the old sour- 
ball barked. “No one knows what you should eat, 
except God Almighty and yourself.” 

The wisdom of the system proved itself brilliantly 
in the case of Cartell. The nurse, of course, never 
doubted its virtues in the least; Miss Newlands 
wasn’t one to take chances. But the first time she 
assembled before her patient one of these audacious, 
barbaric menus, such as he had just consumed, he 
drew back, startled, frightened'—wondering. 

“Won’t hurt you, sir,” Miss Newlands assured, 
sensing his question: “nothing you like can possibly 
hurt you.” 

So he nibbled; testingly at first, gingerly, fear- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


104 

fully. Then noting, after iced encumbers, that he 
still lived—ate carelessly, boldly, relishing. Until 
nothing of the lawless feast survived—except him¬ 
self. That pleased him mightily, and heartened 
somewhat. His mind not wholly at ease, perhaps—= 
some tiny doubt still lingered after the ice-cream, 
doughnuts, bananas, and Russian tea—but, come 
what may, he still lived! The minutes passed—an 
hour—two—and still alive! The tower-clock 
boomed midnight—and all’s well. All alive! 
Never better! Great man—Abernethy! And Miss 
Newlands, too—greater. He thought only in terms 
of digestion. She figures on psychology. Knows 
the spiritual effect on a patient who discovers that he 
can mix bolognas and bananas, pickles and ice-cream, 
crullers and cheddar—and not merely live but feel 
all the better for it. 

‘Fully recovered’'—the patient decided—‘that’s 
what it means!’ (See the nurse’s scheme?) ‘Out of 
here in a week!’ (Note the psychic palingenesis— 
from the sausage!) ‘Couldn’t have been so dread¬ 
fully ill, in the first place.’ (Catch the psychosis of 
the doughnuts?—He’s forgetting!) 

^ sf: jJ: 

A gentle, half-whispered: “Good-night, sir,” and 
the closed door leaves him alone with his surging 
thoughts—alone except for the sentry on post at the 
threshold:—faithful, watchful, alert, quick to alarm 
at faintest approach of danger. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 105 

So they figure to him; Sentries guarding the 
spark of life that may still be left to him: that burns 
so feebly—flickers and sputters—the dread Enemy 
need but snap his fingers to put it out. 

He lay awake long after the nurse had bade him 
good-night.—He held off sleep, easily, with pillow- 
fights and festal thoughts of his restoration, proved 
now beyond peradventure of doubt or doughnuts. 
He was excited, exhilarated, delightfully disturbed 
by that strange new sense of security—or something. 
—‘Great mind—Miss Newlands!—And old Aber- 
nethy—he was no slouch, either,—for all his grouchi¬ 
ness.’*—Altogether, a pleasant world—too sweet to 
forego even for a dream-while. And so, presently, 
when sleep threatened to conquer his revel fancies, 
he summoned Mr. Gatch to his aid. 

Always he had found he could keep awake with 
thoughts of Mr. Gatch—who invented the |^o-called 
bed in which he was, so to speak, resting. He won¬ 
dered often who Mr. Gatch was. He could suspect 
his nationality—after what they had done in France 
and Flanders. He meant to look him up—if he ever 
escaped from this Gatch so-called bed—in “Who’s 
Who” or the Encyclopedia. He wondered if there 
really was a Mr. Gatch, or if he was only a sort of 
Mrs. Harris devised for hospital parlance; they had 
to call the supposititious bed by some name. Still, 
he could think of plenty things to call it. And he 
did, too, when no nurse was about. 


io6 THE CONVALESCENTS 

^ Whoever Gatch was, he got his deserts in having 
that bed named for him. And his memory will live 
as long as men sicken and must lie thereon. Gatch 
presumably meant well; he may have known why he 
made a couch on the lines of a sunken-garden or 
The Rocky Road to Dublin at Coney Island. But 
no patient could ever guess his reason—unless, per^ 
haps, it was to encourage exercise for the wasted 
body. Yes, it was that, possibly. Gatch, maybe, 
saw the patient squirming out of a horse-hair valley 
up to a lane near the edge of the mattress: there 
shoving himself along to the foot-hills higher up; 
then, with courage in both hands and some of the 
sheet, set out boldly for the mountain heights on the 
other side of the bed. Usually, when just about to 
grasp the top and rest on the summit, the patient 
tumbles back into the valley and has to begin to 
make the ascent all over again. All that, in a way, 
is exercise: the only gymnastics or calisthenics pos¬ 
sible in the circumstances. Gatch may have calcu¬ 
lated on these exploring expeditions in search of 
rest, and designed his soi-disant bed accordingly.^ 

Must be that, or something like it, to explain the 
phenomenon. For Gatch, alone in all the personnel 
of the modern hospital, holds his own against prog¬ 
ress. Anchored to his little so-called bed, he watches 
unconcerned the ceaseless march-past of science and 
mechanics toward the perfection of comfort for the 
suffering. Dour, hard, intransigent, he stands rooted 
in the past, not so very far from Procrustes, the 


THE CONVALESCENTS 107 

torture-couch of Torquemada, the Iron Virgin of 
Nuremberg and Mr. Pullman’s sleeping-car. 

Some day, or night more likely, Invention, daring 
new heights, will break a leg and—soothing thought, 
strangely soothing!'—be forced to lie for weeks upon 
one of these horse-hair gargoyles. Then good-night, 
Mr. Gatch I 

Next he hears the curtains flung wide, rattling on 
the pole; the blind jumps up; a glory of sun-light 
leaps Into the room, and with It—eager, limpid, 
refreshing as a wood-land brook:— 

“Good morning, sir! You’ve had a splendid 
night, Miss Newlands reports.” 

The watch has changed; the sentry of the day 
takes the post, keen with news: 

“You’re going out to-day, sir.” 

“Leave the hospital?”—Incredulous. 

“Out—on the porch,” Miss Savile explains; he’s 
been elected, the chart says. 

She told him further that Miss Newlands would 
be off duty for a night or two; had been sent home 
alarmingly Ill; severe attack of acute Indigestion. 

She herself appeared to be grievously perturbed. 

“That’s a rather serious matter, isn’t it?” Cartell 
sympathized. 

“It would be In a student-nurse, yes sir; probably 

finish her! But a graduate, of course-.” The 

point of the dash and the toss of her head were 
quite lost on the dullard. 



io8 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“Something she ate?” he asked inanely. 

“The symptoms are commonly associated with 
something one has eaten.” Beyond that, spoken 
rather acidly, the nurse would not commit herself 
regarding the graduate’s dietetics, but added: 
“Miss Newlands thought it might possibly have 
been some bologna. But that’s most unlikely; it 
came from Harford County.” 

The Sterling-mark, apparently, of sausage above 
suspicion. 

“And, besides,” the patient concurred, “I had 
some of that for my supper.” 

“Yes, but it seems Miss Newlands took hers with 
cucumbers.” 

He took the same, with impunity, he explained. 

“Well, then, the doctors think it must have been 
a doughnut.” 

“/f doughnut wouldn’t do it!” he protested; “I 
ate two.” 

“Three—the night-chart says. That’s what de¬ 
cided them to let you out today—that third dough¬ 
nut 1” 

The modern school, it would appear, holds noth¬ 
ing inconsiderable. Trifles light as air, imponder¬ 
able as a doughnut, they compass in their calcula¬ 
tions. And always, you will come to learn, they 
keep an eye on the inscrutable element of chance. 
. . . What had laid the nurse up—and almost out— 
had put the patient on his feet. 


CHAPTER X 


THE CODE OF THE PORCH CLUB 

T he Porch Club itself has nothing to say in the 
election of a new member. That lies with 
the house-physicians. In the chart-room, or over 
the midnight supper, they decide whether you are 
fit to go out: if so, you get in. Your social status 
or your financial standing, your moral character or 
your past conduct cuts no figure in their decision; 
it’s only your pulse and thermometer. If they’ve 
been behaving decently, according to the nurses’ 
records, you’re elected to the Porch and remain a 
member for the period of your unnatural life in 
the hospital. 

There is a sort of house-committee made up of 
the nurses; but like most house-committees they pre¬ 
ferred a laissez-faire policy and were seldom around 
the Club. 

The Porch sessions were for them a welcome 
breathing-spell of languorous idling, during which' 
they tidied up the patients’ rooms, refreshed the 
flowers, planned some especial delicacy for the food- 
trays, wrote up the charts, took telephone messages, 

turned away forbidden visitors, brought in the ones 

109. 


no 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


permitted, paid off laundress, valets, newsman, took 
instructions from the doctors, smiles or scoldings 
from the superintendent,—all the time, of course, 
keeping an eye on the patients and an ear on the 
bell-rack, and, in between these few little duties, 
studying for the State Board Examinations—now 
only a few weeks off—and knitting silk Jerseys. 
Yes, the Porch Club was a boon to the blue-gingham 
girls: gave them their only real rest and loaf 
throughout the twelve hours of service from seven 
to seven. 

There were no formal rules and regulations: but 
several customs that brooked no slighting—on pen¬ 
alty—if discovered—of the nurses’ displeasure. 
And no man cared to incur that more than once^— 
excepting a certain Mr. Huggins. 

For a new member, always the same manner of 
initial entry to the Porch Club; the double-doors 
opened wide by an orderly, and the patient’s bed 
trundled on by a twain of nurses. Later he might 
arrive by wheel-chair, and finally, toward the end 
of his membership, he would limp in a-foot, wearing 
his best clothes and a patronizing air of superiority: 
‘Some come-back—what?’ 

And invariably—this custom was adamant!—^the 
same amiable, sympathetic greeting one to the other: 
“You’re looking much better today!” And always, 
in return, the same amiable, feeble fiction: “Thanks. 
You are, too!” Always except in the case of Mr. 
Huggins. No matter how well Abner was looking 


Ill 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

he was: ‘‘Feeling worse, darn-sight worse.” And 
he’d call for orange-juice. 

A third point of etiquette decreed to every mem¬ 
ber a place-in-the-sun. Now and then, of course— 
as in every Club—some member would attempt to 
“hog” more than his due of the violet-rays; but 
the right of squatter-sovereignty was never toler-. 
ated. Your own nurse saw to that! 

Never, in any circumstance whatsoever—this 
custom transcends all others!'—never may you tell 
a fellow-member about his “case.” 

You are not supposed to know anything about it. 
Most probably you don’t. 

Still, as K’ung tsze hinted timidly, 2,500 years 
ago, and as several persons since then have said 
openly and unblushingly, ‘It’s a small world after 
air—and such things will get around, especially 
through visitors from the outside. But if through 
any device or reason you do happen to have some 
inside information about your neighbor’s Insides— 
sllenzio! No matter how great the temptation. He 
may assure you. In all kindness, that you’re done for 
—that they’ve given you up—that your room has 
already been promised to another party—^yet you 
must not return the compliment even though you 
know, on authority, that it’s coming to him, and 
sooner than he thinks for. 

They don’t stop you from talking of your own 
case. They couldn’t! Nothing on earth could un¬ 
less your case were lock-jaw or tonsil-removal or 


112 THE CONVALESCENTS 

something similar that physically and mechanically 
made it impossible to talk. And then you’d write it, 
or tell it in sign-language or pantomime. 

And, finally, smokers must not flick ashes from 
cigars or pipes on the club-floor! 

Where then? 

What do you have pockets for, in your pajamas 
or lounge-robe?—Not on the floor, anyway! The 
nurses would have to clear them up; and each had 
a way of her own to discourage infractions of the 
rule. Miss Killarney, for instance, might say noth¬ 
ing, but she’d look volumes, and every glance of 
her blue eyes went out with a fiery brogue. You 
may not know what that means: but the offender 
did. Miss Conde would gently replace the unruly 
cigar with a thermometer, as though to say: ^‘There, 
sir! Flick your ashes from that, if you can!” The 
offender knew her meaning, too. 

As for the rest, the Porch conforms, by common 
consent, to the code of clubs in general. During 
his many, many weeks of membership, Cartell never 
saw any gambling, not even in the most exciting 
games of solitaire. Nor any excessive drinking— 
except in the case of Mr. Huggins—although the 
hospital caves could boast chateau vintages of sarsa¬ 
parilla, ginger-ale, barley-water and lemon-pop. 
Huggins might go too far now and then, with 
orange-juice, but he was of the old school that car¬ 
ried liquor well. And, anyway, Huggins was hope- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 113 

less—a law unto himself, after the fashion of the 
very rich. 

As time brought convalescence, the Porch Club 
grew in numbers and in liveliness. The sessions 
ceased from whispers; became symposiums of symp¬ 
toms, olympiads of operations. There were boastful 
rivalries of pains: challenges of desperate resorts: 
claims for the palm in endurance-tests. They spoke 
the language of contesting athletes, and strained for 
supremacy like Marathon-runners. 

Curious, though, the tragic cases—the really seri¬ 
ous members of the body—spoke little and rather 
fearsomely. The loudest, most confident talk came 
from the appendix or tonsil, or some other merely 
ornamental member. 

Cartell made one of a strangely assorted company, 
thrown together by the tricks of mischance. . . . 
A famous soldier, who had come scot-free through 
storms of shrapnel, machine-gun bullets, gas-filled 
trenches, only to be laid low now by a self-willed 
grape-seed in the appendix. ... A little boy, heir 
to millions, watched and guarded by valets, grooms 
and governess, abominably hurt by a fall from his 
rocking-horse. ... A mining engineer, whose skill 
had driven deadly fumes from the bowels of the 
earth, got into his own a whiff of sewer-gas from the 
marble bath of a modish hotel. . . . An iron- 
moulder, who toyed for years with cauldrons of 
molten metal amid a wilderness of flying fires, lies 


114 THE CONVALESCENTS 

nearly finished by the infectious flare of a safety- 
match. . . . 

And, In gorgeous salience, dominant of all the 
scene, the old-rose kimono and a bud-encircled 
boudoir-cap above a face now masked by a silvery 
veil; a year or so ago, the cynosure of capitals: 
the most talked-of belle at a Court-presentation. 

Helleu did her portrait In pastel. You’ve seen It, 
copied faintly. In Sunday-Supplements. You’ve read 
her splendours rhapsodized In magazines: “If 
Sargent doesn’t paint her In all the fickle moods and 
phases of her beauty, he misses such chance as 
Romney found In Emma Hart. . . . Only Zuloaga 
or Sorolla could have caught and caged her color— 
the pink of pomegranate beneath old-ivory white.” 

Less than a year ago. And now, shrinking behind 
the veil, a face seared and scarred, discoloured as 
though In flame and beyond repair'—by no more than 
a thimbleful of tainted complexion cream!—com¬ 
pounded from the favorite prescription—lately un¬ 
earthed—of Ninon de L’ Enclos. Or was It Cleo¬ 
patra’s? Or Marilynn Miller’s? The advertise¬ 
ments vary. 

But only skin-deep, the hurt. They’d restore her 
beauty—these magic-workers. She knew that, 
surely. Else she couldn’t be chatting so light- 
heartedly with the Contessa Tulsa Bianchl, a woman 
of beauty almost as famouS' as her own. You might 
as easily Imagine the Venus-de-MIlo kidding with 
Phryne or some other possible rival. If she weren’t 


THE CONVALESCENTS 115 

perfectly sure that, some day, she’d get back her 
arms. 

Such faith as Venus had in Phidias and the 
marbles of Carrara, the Veiled Lady had in the 
doctors and the magics of B. M. LL But for that 
she would have died—she confessed to Kevan 
Varrey, the one man in the Club with whom she 
spoke, always, quite at ease. Told it, first, on a 
day when the world looked terrifyingly black to the 
painter, and told it in a tone so eager with encourage¬ 
ment—not for herself but him'—that, intensely curi¬ 
ous, he made to lift the bandage from his blinded 
eyes. A nurse crossed to him swiftly, seized his 
hand, with a peremptory—“Careful, sir!” ‘Yes, 
of course; he’d forgotten for the moment’—that his 
single chance of future light lay in present darkness. 

A widow, the Contessa Bianchi, twice over: and 
both times widowed—by the grace of American 
Courts—of foreign husbands, with which, she as¬ 
sured Miss Trenholme, her nurse, she was now 
thoroughly fed up. 

In the last instance her lawyers had petitioned 
that she be restored to the Miss of maidenhood. 
But this privilege the Court had curtly denied, ex¬ 
plaining subsequently in private to her counsel that 
the male portion of the community were entitled 
to some protection 1 

She had traveled several thousands of miles in 
quest of this little hospital—or, rather, the great 


ii6 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


surgeon whose fame rang through Europe by rea¬ 
son of his achievements in the camp hospitals. 

Hurrying pell-mell from San Sebastian—where 
false rumor engaged her to an Albanian grandee— 
she had stopped only at Monte Carlo to see if she 
were en veine for the surgical ordeal, and in Paris 
for the sort of negligees one ought to wear in a hos¬ 
pital. And she wore them, too—a different one 
almost every day that she lit up the Porch by her 
gala presence. 

“Go abroad,” she seriously advised a group of 
nurses, “for your hats and gowns and fluffy laissez- 
faires, but get your husbands, your divorces and 
your operations here at home. I’ve tried all three 
on the other side. No good! Over here a woman 
is everything to one man; over there she’s the same 
thing to all men. . . . They make you tired. Look 
at Artemisia’s—her operation, I mean. They all 
took a hack at it—Athens, Rome, Paris, London. 
Regular royal progress. And in the end she’ll have 
to come home for it. Just as I did.” 

She was equally averse to the foreign nurses.^ In 
her own particular experience: “The young ones 
took my lingerie and the old ones took snuff.” Then, 

* “There is no nursing worthy of the name in Europe, outside 
the countries of North Europe, and Britain. The American nurse 
and her methods are successful because she has back of her gen¬ 
erations of women trained in the discipline of liberty. That gives 
her initiative, resource and balance. . . . English nursing-schools 
are still modelled after the monasteries and church communities 
of the Middle Ages.”— Alice Fitzgerald, Director of the Depart¬ 
ment of Nursing of the League of Red Cross Societies. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 117 

apropos of nothing actually on view, but by some 
association of ideas, she babbled of baths : 

“That’s the real trouble over there. ’Tisn’t their 
blood-feuds, nor their trade-rivalries nor their 
boundaries; it’s simply baths—that they never take. 
They’re always getting into hot water because they 
never do get in it. If the United States ever joins 
a League of Nations it should make a necessary con¬ 
dition that every commune in every State in Europe 
should set-up at least one real bath-tub with real 
running water, and that every person, regardless of 
age, sex or social position, should use it at least 
once every so often. You’d see how they’d quiet 
down over there!” 

To the continental rarity of what is here a com¬ 
monplace, she accredited a long-regnant school of 
painting: the callipygian Dianas, Daphnes and 
Danaes, all surprised au-bain, shame-faced as 
though caught at some sybarite shindig, and all 
splashing from that art-spirit which exploits the 
exotic, exceptional, startling. “Year after year,” 
she exclaimed, “they make a Salon sensation with 
what here is left to the soap-advertisement. 

“And the idea of sending over nice, sweet girls 
like you, and brilliant young doctors, to scrape and 
curry entire nations who are always bragging of 
their arts and poetry, their ancient civilizations, 
noble traditions, heroic aspirations, but never 
learned the meaning of soap and shampoos.” 

Despite her long residence in Europe and her 


ii8 THE CONVALESCENTS 

foreign husbands, the Contessa spoke her native 
American with scarcely a touch of outlandish accent. 
This she attributed to the fact that the formative 
years of her life—the first sixteen or seventeen— 
had passed in Oklahoma—Muskogee.—“And you 
never get quite away from that sort of thing,” she 
explained with candid pride, “no matter how far you 
go.” And she had gone far: she was proud of that, 
too. 

“Two titles clinched, and a third one left on the 
hooks—not bad, mes amies, for Muskogee I” 

The Albanian title, she added, was the choicest of 
all—“though the first two weren’t phoney, by a long 
shot”'—and the most exciting: “One foot on the 
throne, one in the grave, and up to his ears in debt.” 
This last might have been arranged easily enough 
—“You could pay off their national debt with one 
of Pa’s ‘gushers’”;—but there was a morganatic 
joker in it somewhere, and she shied at that. She 
never could understand precisely what the mor¬ 
ganatic meant but she didn’t like the idea: “Sounded 
a little too Mormon” for her. 

Besides, if she did marry again—but nothing on 
earth could tempt her after what she’d seen of them 
here!—“Look at them, Trenny,” she appealed to 
the nurse: “Unshaved—straggle-haired—brows 
touselled'—sloppy slippers—those horrible bath¬ 
robes—boney, scraggy—and the color of them— 
ugh! ‘Dreadfully ill’—Yes, but they don’t have to 
look like that! The wonien-patients don’t.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 119 

No—not to the naked eye. And but hardly to 
the crystal vision of the savant. Note the confusion 
and puzzlement of young Tantree and the younger 
Fenway as they pause at the chaise-longue. For to 
that grace the occupant transforms the clumsy wheel¬ 
chair. So, too, does the Contessa; all the women 
patients. Even to the Gatch-bed—grim, ungainly, 
ghastly—they give, somehow, the complexion of the 
boudoir, the coquetry of the petit-lever. 

Only three days, four at most—the surgeons 
marvel—since they assisted at the radical altera¬ 
tions, practically a reconstruction. Even now much 
of the scaffolding still up: temporary beams and 
girders still in place: deep marks of the dismantling 
that only time can iron out. But no sign of dis¬ 
turbance, not the slightest flaw, in the facade I 
Cheeks a-bloom, lips a-glow, eyes a-light. Coiffure 
marcelled to the permanence and precision of sculp¬ 
tor’s marble—not the tiniest tress astray above the 
falling collar of the negligee. The hand, proffered 
for the ceremonial of the “pulse,” orrissed and 
pinked au hout des ongles. Every detail of appear¬ 
ance and attire—down to the tips of the Louis Seize 
pumps—formal, trim, correct, alluring. “Business 
going on as usual, during alterations.” That always 
takes skill and care^—and sometimes a false front. 

Nor waits on convalescence, this elegance. They 
bring it with them. Arrive always, unless already 
reduced to unconsciousness, in best bib and tucker, 


120 THE CONVALESCENTS 

and often with French maid and wardrobe-trunk 
lodged nearby. Even the lowly, of the public-ward, 
comes bedecked “as the bride adorneth herself with 
jewels,” alert, no less than her sister of the Porch, 
to that spiritual support which high authority 
attaches to fine raiment even above religion. 

But the male patient—^you heard the Contessa’s 
contrast! 

Considering the ancientness ^ of hospitals, their 
masculine origin and ordering, the numbers of him 
that every hour of every day are sent there, his 
neglect of the amenities of the occasion Is peculiarly 
significant. He appears, generally, to have been 
hustled off In ‘any old thing.’ ‘Doesn’t really mat¬ 
ter’ they tell him—his women-folk—and fetch from 
the attic moth-chest the suit he had meant to go to 
Armenia or to go fishing. Lucky, indeed. If they 
overlook that Prince Albert that he’s been keeping 
against his old age or a possible recrudescence of 
the model. . . . Later when comes the peevishness 
that ushers convalescence. It occurs to him that the 
Prince Albert had been reserved with deliberate 
thrift—‘in case anything happened’—euphemism 
for the one remaining social function In which a 
Prince Albert passes unjeered. . . . En passant^ 
more than one sudden codicil, rich In dlsappolnt- 

*The Surat hospital, in Hindustan, has been in continuous use 
for twenty-tw'o centuries. Aesculapius was house-physician of the 
one at Cos. Long before that—4000 B.C.—Heliopolis was the very 
Baltimore of its day in the matter of hospitals. Vide the Ebers 
Papyrus. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


I2I 


ment, has emerged from a ripped seam, and some 
blasted hopes from missing buttons. 

And there—in the sunniest patch of the Porch— 
absorbed in The Financial Chronicle while absorbing 
orange-juice—Mr. Huggins. The most exacting 
patient in the hospital: domineering, captious, auto¬ 
cratic. So that he figured in the mind of his nurse 
—the Bishop’s daughter—and occasionally in her 
speech—as the Grand Mogul. 

He was reputed rich'—beyond any other man in 
Anne Arundel County: he didn’t look rich, as little 
as does the richest man in the world. 

Even less did the look of him betray his politics: 
a radical, violent radical. Not a socialist—he had 
not yet reached that point of revolt against the ex¬ 
isting order; but merely an anarchist, opposed to all 
laws that touched his estate or hampered his financial 
activities. That’s what the war had made of Mr. 
Huggins; or, rather, its sequelae: The unfamiliar 
woes put on wealth by the holocaust had transformed 
a conservative country banker, with a private wire 
to Wall Street, into a figure that would cheer Bryant 
Park or Trafalgar Square, if the police didn’t inter¬ 
fere. Lacking other audience he would turn upon 
his nurse. Miss Conde: 

“Do you know what I think of the income tax?” 

She knew well enough but would answer; 

“No, sir.” 

“The infamy of the ages!” 


122 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“Really, sir?” 

“The precursor of the collapse of the Republic,” 
and he threw it straight at the helpless young woman 
as though holding her personally responsible for the 
whole unhappy business. 

On one occasion he embarrassed her to a blush, 
by asking in a voice loud enough to turn every eye 
toward their corner of the porch: 

“How would you like to share an income of a 
hundred thousand a year-” 

(‘Good Lord,’—a public proposal!) 

“—with the Government? Have ’em take half 
of it from you? Wouldn’t like that, would you?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“What!” 

“Well, I mean, sir, seeing what’s left I wouldn’t 
much mind their half. But you mustn’t worry about 
such things. You are to think only of getting well, 
Dr. Kreweson says—and out of here.” 

They missed no chance to remind him of that. 

At times he’d pick on some convalescent, still too 
weak for defence or flight, and rail at the entire 
philosophy of modern economics as applied to 
wealth. He grew especially eloquent against the 
theory that the enormously rich should pay more 
for medical service than the extremely poor. There 
the radical’s hatred of class distinction came up 
strong. Huggins argued that when a great surgeon 
gave his skill for nothing to a poor man and then 
made up for it by his charge for similar service to 



THE CONVALESCENTS 123 

the rich patient the former was in danger of being 
“pauperized.’’ He had fervid fear of any device 
of so-called charity that threatened the dignity of 
poverty and, incidentally, the tax rate. 

His wealth, though of national renown, was his 
least distinction in the hospital. There was, for one 
thing, his appetite. That was not only voracious: 
it was vociferous; loudly demanding his meals on 
the clock-stroke: snacks between times, with orange- 
juice to wash them down: and long after midnight 
he would send a tired, worn-out nurse in quest of 
sandwiches, cakes, or puddings,'—and more orange- 
juice—always orange-juice. He consumed orange- 
juice—goblet after goblet—as though the hospital’s 
endowment included half the citrus groves of 
Florida, Jamaica and Spain. 

Every room had, of course, an electric-call, and 
on the table, by the bed, a small hand-bell. But 
Mr. Huggins was taking no chances with delicate 
mechanisms or alarms that merely tinkled. He had 
brought from home, and kept constantly within ^ 
reach, a large brass bell; the sort the village- 
auctioneer employs to gather a crowd, or the 
farmer’s wife to call the help to dinner. Of course, 
he never used it: but its presence gave him a sense 
of security. 

But what marked Huggins beyond all else was his 
drawn-out sojourn in the hospital: his persistence in 
staying on long after his complete recovery: his 
flat refusal to notice hint, intimation or innuendo. 


124 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

He got them a-plenty, from the physicians, surgeons, 
internes and even the superintendent, the masterful 
Miss Beaux. But—no go! Not in his condition! 
He’d leave it to the nurse. “You’ll take her word, 
won’t you?—Bishop’s daughter !” 

“I suppose you know best, sir, how you feel 
but—” 

“Certainly!” 

“And, in any event, sir, we’re not supposed ta 
argue with our patient.” 

“Quite so! I knew you’d agree with me.” And 
he stayed on. 

Somehow the notion came—^by jest out of puzzle 
—that Huggins was in—no, impossible!—too 
ridiculous!—well, then, he’d taken an abiding fancy 
for some one and meant to abide there with it. 

No one except the cook ever ventured to guess 
the particular object of his silent, stubborn devo¬ 
tion; and she guessed the orange-crate. 



CHAPTER XI 


THE FACETIATION OF A MAJOR 

OPERATION 

I T was through Varrey, the painter, that Cartell 
came to know Bodley Kricked 
Mr. Kricke was a convalescent-emeritus, so to 
speak: “discharged as cured”—some time ago, but 
revisiting the hospital occasionally for “observa¬ 
tion.” Thus he retained his Club privileges and 
opportunity to impart to the members—in strictest 
confidence—that he was paying Varrey’s bills: 
“One of our young men,” he described him: “doing 
great work, too, till his eyes got tired—from lookin’ 
at the gals, I tell him,” he guffawed. “ ‘Over-work’ 
these doctors say. But none of that in our plant— 
is there, Varrey? Rest-rooms for every department 
from binders to artists.” 

When neither of his hearers commented on the 
already widely-advertised altruism of the Kricke 
Publishing Company, he reverted to his original 
humour: “Still, if you’ve got to lose your sight, you 
couldn’t ask a pleasanter way, could you?” 

‘The name is a household-word in some sections of the country, 
by reason of Kricke’s comprehensive compilation, in three volumes, 
entitled: “How to Beat the Doctor to It.” 

125 


126 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


Bodley Kricke boasted a natural flair of the gen¬ 
eral’s favor; knew what the public would buy. He 
had published “The Secret Amours” of every court 
in Europe with a success equalled only by his 
“Beauties of the Bible”—the “beauties” ranging 
through all the ages from Genesis to Revelations and 
on to Apocrypha. Here you might see, perhaps for 
the first time, convincing portraits of Eve, Sheba’s 
queen, Salome, Jezebel, Judith and Susanna—she of 
the bath and Peeping Toms—to say nothing of such 
lesser lights as Cain’s wife and Ashtoreth and many 
of the “strange women,” unnamed but piquante; all 
“In three colors and suitable for framing,” and all 
looking exactly alike—as though the artist. In pov¬ 
erty or love, had done them from one model.^ With 
each portrait went a complete biographical sketch, 
of meticulous detail. Lord only knows where the 
author got the facts. 

“Written anything lately?” he plumped at Cartell. 

“My last will just before I came here.” 

“I mean something to sell, not give away.” 

“I’m afraid my will will prove a ‘sell,’ after the 
bills here are paid.” 

“That’s just what I was thinking. Get busy. 
There’s a book In this place. I saw that the moment 
I came out of the ether. Something doing here.” 

“It’s been done, a dozen times.” 

*The artist’s “originals” were subsequently acquired for the 
decoration of an eminently chic hotel at Atlantic City. The local 
Baedeker “stars” the collection. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 127 

“Yes, but never done right. These nurses, for one 
thing. They’ve never been written about as they 
really are. There’s a group of them out there on 
the nurses’ bench.—Like a row of Dutch dolls In 
their blue-gingham. I’ve been looking them over, 
and catching their conny-shonle. . . . I’ve read a 
lot of hospital books, printed two or three myself. 
But I see now what a bad job they made of it. Not 
one caught the humor. It was either gush or a 
grouch; sickly sentiment or morbid Introspection. 
What I want Is—Is—well, the human-comedy,” he 
floundered—“the mirror-up-to-nature stuff—nature 
in the buff.” 

“You can get It in the raw—In several books: 
some famous.” 

“But not funny!” 

Excruciatingly funny'—two or three of them, 
Cartell protested. They’re dosed out to a patient by 
the nurses, regularly, along with his first solid food. 
And If he doesn’t shake with laughter over the 
vralsemblant account of the horrors he himself has 
just gone through—shake with care, of course, so 
as not to split the stitches—they take his tempera¬ 
ture. Something going wrong with the case, some¬ 
where. They had taken his, he confessed to Kricke. 
He had quite missed the gayetles of a major opera¬ 
tion. 

“Where’s your sense of humor, man? Varrey 
said you have one. What’s become of It?” 

“I don’t know. Ask the nurse. She may know 


128 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

what the surgeons did with it. I’m perfectly certain 
I haven’t it—the slightest vestige of it—in any part 
of my anatomy. So if you’re looking for a funny 
book on the subject—Get the author of your ‘Bible 
Beauties!’ Nothing could be funnier than that.” 

Yes, Kricke assented, if he’d had the luck to go 
through what Cartell did. “But no imagination; 
he can only write facts.” 

“Then why not do it yourself, Mr. Kricke? 
With your actual experience here and your teeming 
sense of the comic, you’re the ‘indicated’ dose in the 
case.” 

“Family objections,” Kricke confided. He 
wanted to; had it all mapped out: a ouija-work 
dictated by Mark Twain and Josh Billings, with a 
dash of old Hostetter, the almanac humorist. . . . 
“But the wife—well, you know, women are sort of 
prejudiced on that particular subject. Mrs. Kricke 
thinks the only funny thing about nurses is their 
men-patients and the fools they make of them¬ 
selves.” 

Through the veiled allusion showed the age-old 
story, all the clearer for Kricke’s abstracted self¬ 
survey in the mirror, smoothing his sparse locks, 
perking his Irish-poplin tie, shooting his cuffs. 

“On every other point,” he resumed loyally, “my 
wife has the mind of Justinian, only no sense of 
the ridiculous. Says that’s how she came to marry 
me—so she could share mine. And she’s been a big, 
intellectual force in my publications—’specially in 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


129 

the cafeteria and rest-room, and advising our girls 
against squandering their incomes on fashionable 
follies and idle display. Left to themselves, most 
of those bindery kids would be dressing like Mrs. 
Astor on their nine dollars a week.—Nevertheless”, 
he shouted, suddenly noting his hearer’s deep 
breaths and drooping eyelids, “I believe there is a 
way of doing the book that won’t offend my wife. 
I didn’t intend, myself, to make it all hilarious, and 
I wouldn’t demand it of you.” 

“No?” yawned the patient: “that’s certainly a 
comfort.” 

Kricke took heart. “A little high-brow won’t 
hurt. People rather expect it from my authors; 
something about Schopenhauer, Tolstoi and 
Sneetchy'-” 

“Nietzsche?” he suggested. 

“Yes, and Bergson and that nasty Freud stuff”; 
he served it ‘fried.’ 

“You think that’s effective?” 

“Sure-fire! Look at Wassili Gaubengovitch— 
‘Greatest American Realist,’ I advertise him; made 
his reputation—and keeps it—just by that sort of 
thing; and ringing in now and then *Also sprache 
Zarathushtra !—if you get me.” 

“Quite. You pronounce it perfectly.” 

“Ought to. I’ve printed it in every one of Gau- 
bengovitch’s books.” 

His kindly plan, he urged, considered Varrey, too; 
he’d illustrate the book. And since Cartell missed 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


130 

the humour of the subject, Varrey could insinuate 
the fun in the pictures—“way H. G. Wells did in 
his ‘Outline of History.’ ” ^ 

Mr. Kricke expatiated on this singular view of an 
epochal work; appeared to believe sincerely that the 
Noah’s Ark and Little Rollo illuminations of 
Wells’ text were cunning devices to beguile the 
reader from a too serious consideration of the 
author’s deductions. 

“But suppose that I——well, that anything hap¬ 
pened—and I didn’t finish the job?” 

“I’ll have it finished for you I -Don’t you worry 
about that—so long as / don’t worry.” 

And he didn’t. In fact he saw possibilities in case 
anything did happen—advertising possibilities. He 
had proved the device, in one or two instances when 
nothing did happen really—and got away with it. 
Why, he argued to Cartell, “The Mystery of Edwin 
Drood” was left unfinished purposely, by arrange¬ 
ment between Dickens and his publisher, in order to 
enhance the mystery of the book, and its sales. And 
he promised similar results in this instance, ‘if any¬ 
thing happened.’ 

The prospect enthused him; 

Now, get busy! I’ll send up Miss Drizzle, my 
best stenographer—a peach; homely as an old 
flivver, but a quick ‘pick-up’ and very sympathetic! 

An instance of Kricke’s lively flair ? . . . Despite the immensely 
, , . ” illustrations, the humorous quality of 

Mr, Wells historical analoejies and political philosophy is only now 
seeping into the general ken. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 131 

Always giggles at a good line. Now go to it I And 
make it funny—funny—^^as—hell!” 

“Go to hell yourself, Kricke, with your giggling 
stenographer,” Cartell suggested sociably. “Have 
her make notes of the gayeties and jollities you find 
there, and any one can weave them into a best-seller. 
You see, IVe just come from there, after a long 
stay, and with every shred of flesh singed off my 
bones, and I got back only by the grace of God and 
the genius of man, and I see nothing funny in either 
of them.” 

Miss Savile, at the door, reminded the patient— 
while looking straight at the caller—that it was time 
for his nap. 

Kricke .remarked the blue-gingham. “Student- 
nurse, eh? How long have you had her?” 

“From the beginning.” 

“Plain, then, your case was a sure thing from the 
start. Nothing serious at all, or absolutely hopeless. 
Or they wouldn’t have put that kid in charge. Why, 
I don’t believe she weighs—^—” 

“What’s her weight to do with it?” Cartell de¬ 
murred wearily. “She doesn’t have to hold me down 
—or sit on me. I’m not crazy—as yet!” he added, 
uselessly. 

“No, but anything can happen—after all the 
ether you had. And suppose you took a notion, sud¬ 
denly, to jump out of that window?” 

Cartell thought he’d enjoy it—just now. 

The man’s scrubby humour nettled him to angry 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


132 

protest: “Miss Savile graduates in a few weeks. 
She’s preparing now for the examinations. They’re 
extremely severe. She’s had three years of experi¬ 
ence with almost every kind of patient, but probably 
required just this sort of case to complete her train¬ 
ing. That’s why they put her in charge—to finish 
her off.” 

Kricke wagged his head in mock pity: 

‘ ‘And'—you—don’t—think—th at’s—funny ? ‘To 
finish her off?’ And incidentally you tool” He 
shouted his relish of his own humour. “Well, at the 
worst, old man, they’ve provided a pleasant finish 
for you.” 

“Don’t count on that too confidently,” Cartell 
warned him. “They make it a sweet world—those 
‘Dutch dolls’ you spoke of; a world of tenderness, 
sympathy, loveliness. And a man wills his very 
damnedest not to leave it. Longs, fights and prays 
—pagan though he be—that he may live to prove 
somehow, somewhere, sometime, his gratitude and 
adoration.” 

Kricke heard him through with an ever-widening 
grin of self-complacence: 

“Just as I said. It’s either grouch or gush.” 

Kricke’s hilarity had been so easy and, apparently, 
sincere that Cartell struggled to reach his view-point. 
It irked him that he should miss elements of humour 
obvious even to the creator of “Beauties from the 
Bible.” And yet, try as he would, he could see noth- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 133 

Ing funny In the place—except, possibly, himself— 
his being here. ... A man who believed implicitly 
In mental-therapy; who “threw off” every suggestion 
of malaise. He had not, perhaps,, attained the plane 
of faith that any seeming ailment could be routed by 
a determined Tush-tush! and a couple of Boo’s! 
Yet he had always been able to convince himself 
that he was In perfect health—except, possibly, for 
too much tobacco and too little exercise. Then, sud¬ 
denly, to wake up here—a hundred-to-onc chance, if 
luck’s with him and the going’s good—yes, that 
might be funny! 

And the humour held, even against the dulcilo- 
qules of Adepts—who could look upon features 
pinched and wizened to a dried lemon, pipe-stem 
wrists, deep-sunken eyes, the bulge of the surgeon’s 
plumbing beneath blanket-robes of patterns reserved 
exclusively for hospital and prize-ring—and yet: 
“There’s been nothing wrong, really. To think so 
is Error.”. . . Flawless philosophy and of proved 
profit; but needs, somehow, much fellowship of the 
faith: close communion of kindred credence. Phrase 
and persuasion once clear as noon to Cartell he 
heard now dazed and listless. Taking more peace 
and courage—though his every superstition resented 
—from the message of candles lighted for his safety 
and from a tiny vial of holy-water sent to him by his 
shoemaker. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A 
FAHRENHEIT 

O NE day, after a session of the Porch Club, 
Cartel! sat gloomily over the luncheon-tray, 
staring into space. 

“Stop thinking, sir!’’ 

He seemed not to hear. 

So then, more sharply: “Eat your luncheon.” 

He shook his head. 

“Why not?” Miss Savile demanded. “Isn’t the 
tray attractive?” 

“I’m not hungry,” he answered querulously. 

“That cold-consomme—you don’t have to be 
hungry for that; comes from Somerset County—the 
chicken did,” she persisted, till he took a spoonful 
and set the cup aside. 

“No, you must finish that, sir,” and she replaced 
the cup. 

“I’ve had quite enough.—Hand me a cigar, 
please.” 

“Indeed you’ll not smoke, sir, till you’ve eaten 
your luncheon.” 

“Not today,” he begged. “Don’t insist, please.” 

134 


THE CONVALESCENTS 135 

“I must, sir, or know what’s wrong. The doctors 
will ask when they see the chart: ‘No lunch?’ I 
can’t say, simply, you were peevish or grouchy or 
disagreeable—not the least like your usual self. 
Come, now,” she coaxed, “what is it?” 

“O, a cheery little nothing I heard out there, on 
the porch—from a Mr. Cribbles.” 

“Yes, Miss Killarney’s patient. I saw him whis¬ 
pering to you—as though it were very important.” 

“No! Mere bagatelle! Only told me I’m done 
for! Couldn’t get well. He got that in confidence 
from a friend of his who visits here. His friend 
got it from some one outside, some one who knows. 
Thought I ought to be told—to put my affairs 
straight^—and my soul.” 

For an instant the nurse was too dumbfounded to 
speak: turned away lest he should see her dismay. 
Then, with a burst of laughter: 

“Did he tell you that, too? He does the same 
with every patient he meets. But most of them have 
guessed the truth. I supposed you all did. . . . 
The poor thing is crazy—mad as a hatter,” she 
rattled on while the patient finished the consomme— 
“though I don’t see what a hatter has to get-mad 
about, seeing the prices he gets now-a-days ror a 
whiff of straw and a feather!—Now the chops, 
please—and both potatoes.—By rights, of course, 
that man should be in the psychopathic ward and 
kept there. But they’re trying some new out-door 
system of treating idiocy—something to do with 


136 THE CONVALESCENTS 

violet-rays. We all can see how it works in his 
case: he’s getting crazier every minute.—Yes, I 
thought you’d like that salad-dressing.—He keeps 
us on tenter-hooks every second he’s on the porch, 
lest he jump over the rail. Of course. I’ve no busi¬ 
ness to tell you all this, but you’d have worried, 
naturally, if you didn’t know the truth about the— 
the—poor fish.—You’re going to have some for 
dinner—Norfolk spots—from Princess Anne 
County: caught this morning. They look most at¬ 
tractive.—And isn’t Miss Killarney lucky to get a 
case like that? Extremely rare you know; the first 
I’ve ever seen here—and the strawberries, too”— 
she uncovered the fruit-dish—“the very first of the 
season—and he’s so hopelessly, incurably morbid.” 

“Didn’t speak so to me,” Cartell objected. 
“Seemed disgustingly cheerful.” 

“Yes, so he is—about his own condition. It’s 
only about other persons that he worries. That’s 
the peculiar feature of the case—the abnormal 
altruism. It’s what they call, I believe, eh—eh— 
hetero-hypochondriasis.” 

She made-up the nonce-word as airily as Mr. 
Holmes fitted “anesthesia” to the haloed tooth- 
pull. 

“After that,” she said, indicating the emptied 
tray, “I think you may have one of the large cigars.” 
Held the match to the Corona-Corona: saw, de¬ 
lighted, the blues go up in smoke: then flew to the 


THE CONVALESCENTS 137 

superintendent’s office. There she confessed to 
Miss Beaux with more anger than regret how she 
had lied'—“horribly”—about Miss Killarney’s 
patient. Simply had to do it, she explained: “I' 
know, of course, it was utterly wrong-” 

“Yes, my dear,” Miss Beaux agreed; “a lie is 
always wrong, never justified. And you’ve broken 
one of the most important rules—discussed another 
nurse’s patient. Might cost you your license, if the 
State Board learned of it. They wouldn’t allow you 
to graduate.” 

Whereupon Miss Savile’s mouth twitched and her 
eyes blinked and her shoulders drooped in threat 
of a faint. 

“Besides violating a rule of the hospital, you’ve 
outraged the laws of philology. There’s no such 
combination possible as hetero and—and—what 
you said. Still your first consideration,” Miss Beaux 
continued, “possibly your highest duty is to your 
own patient. We’ll let it go at that, child; and, 
perhaps, your case didn’t really believe what you 
told him.” 

“O, but he did, ma’am! Ate up every word of 
it—and his lunch, too. Had barely touched it be¬ 
fore.” 

“Then you must have 1 - done it very well, 

indeed. And there’s really nothing more to worry 
about. 'Mr. Gribbles is leaving tomorrow: ‘dis¬ 
charged as cured.’ ” 




THE CONVALESCENTS 


138 

“Not really cured?” Her tone arraigned the 
Avenging Angels. 

“Well—er—sufficiently for domestic require¬ 
ments. His wife is going to nurse him.” 

“Serves him right!” 

“Perhaps so. But we need the room. And after 
what the man did we must be charitable and assume 
that he is, at least, half-crazy. Later on, if Mr. 
Cartell recovers, you can confess the slight exag¬ 
geration.” 

“Yes, of course,” Sandra exclaimed eagerly, “I’ll 
tell him it was found that the man was not crazy, 
but only an abnormally low, mean, brutish order of 
intelligence.” 

To Cribbles’ offending she gave weight and wrath 
in curious degree. Frequent enough, its like, to 
keep them always watchful of it. Too often they’ve 
seen a patient won gradually from monsters of 
despair, only to be laid low by some sudden, miser¬ 
able maggot of a word, bred not always of care¬ 
lessness or stupidity or tactlessness, but rather of 
malice, cunning, sheer deviltry. There’s a long 
story in “Stop thinking, sir.” 

And it does the work; the sick wits obey. In 
health the mind would react militant against the 
naiVe device: think all the harder. Now it swerves 
from its obsession at the first flick of the phrase— 
quite as a flirt of the matador’s blanket diverts the 
single-minded bull. Mentally you are now, in very 
truth, ‘brother-to-the-ox.’ 


THE CONVALESCENTS 139 

The next day Cartell, missing the mad-man from 
his wonted sun-spot on the Porch, asked Miss Savile 
if he had jumped off, or something. No, she re¬ 
gretted to say, but the doctors had decided they 
could do nothing more for him—which was quite 
true; ‘‘And his friends have taken him away.” 

After some moments of silence Cartell asked 
abruptly, as though from the book he was reading: 

“Do you think a lie is ever justified?” 

“Certainly not!”—She flamed at the mere sug¬ 
gestion. 

“In no conceivable circumstance?” 

“No, sir I”—most emphatic. 

“And a nurse wouldn’t-?” 

“Never!” 

“Not even if prevarication were indicated as a 
prophylactic in the case?” 

“I’ve never heard of such a case!” 

“Cribbles?” 

“O, stop think-!” 

“What did you say ails him?” 

She had to rummage for a moment before she 
found it: “Hetero-hypochondriasis.—Why—do 
you question-?” 

“No!—I’ve caught it.” 

“Caught whatT^ 

“That Greek disturbance.” 

“You couldn’t possibly, sir. You haven’t the first 
symptom.” 

“No, but the last.—Close the window, please— 





THE CONVALESCENTS 


140 

and lock it. Yes, Miss Savile, I find I’m worrying 
—morbidly—not about myself, but—some one 
else.” 

“No harm in that, sir, so long as you don’t tell 
them. Just keep it to yourself and—^your mouth 
shut, please. Three minutes.” 

What these girls couldn’t do with a thermometer! 
Taking temperature was the least. In their hands 
that tiny thread of glass served purposes as varied, 
effective, fantastic as the lace fan of a Florentine 
belle. Many a cry of pain has been hushed to a 
whimper by it. Many an outburst of temper 
silenced. And some sentimental avowals, too! O, 
yes, that’s been known to happen—in a hospital. 
Romance sticks a rose to her nose, and laughs at 
chloroform. Seems to like the place—haunts it^— 
for the surprise and novelty—like fashion on a lark 
to the Night-Court and the Morgue in the sight¬ 
seeing bus. Or comes to show what she can do— 
here—where you’d least expect it. What gorgeous 
fancies she can weave from shabby, faded material. 
Takes the tag-rag from Nature’s ash-can and with 
a pass of the hand—presto!—life a-new and its best 
enchantments. 

But imagine a man trying to make a marriage- 
proposal, or only hinting a nascent fondness, or 
the mere affection of gratitude—which is all Cartell 
had in mind—with a thermometer stuck half-way 
down his throat and the creature of his fancy order¬ 
ing him to shut his mouth—and keep it shut, three 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


141 

minutes! It can’t be done! It has been tried, by 
godless men and good, by bold, desperate men in 
the first flush of recovering, and it can’t be done! 

Miss Newlands went on duty that night, fully 
informed of Miss Savile’s desperate excursion into 
cerebrology: the invention there of a new disorder 
for Mr. Cribbles and the purpose thereof. The 
name of it, too, she had repeated until it came trip¬ 
pingly from the tongue. So that if the patient, still 
doubting, should recur to the subject—^^as he had 
done today—Miss Newlands might not be taken off 
guard at any point. 

The attack came over the supper-tray: 

“Have you had any experience with crazy men?” 

“A little, sir. And they, perhaps, were only half¬ 
crazy. Most men are, you know, Dr. Switcher 
says.” 

“Did you ever have a case of hetero-hypo- 
chon-?” 

“Not of my own, no, sir.” She intoned it as 
though lamenting a personal calamity—a precious 
professional privilege of which she had been de¬ 
prived unfairly. 

“Then there really is such a thing as^-?” 

“Oh, yes, indeed, sir! We’ve had a case of it 
here, only recently.” 

“Miss Killarney’s patient—Cribbles?” 

“So he called himself, yes, sir. But they found 
he’d really forgotten his right name. A beautiful 




THE CONVALESCENTS 


142 

case—so definite! Miss Killarney’s writing a mono¬ 
graph of it for the Medical Record. 

No half-way methods for Miss Newlands. And 
the ghost lay until morning. 

Cartell woke in a room still darkened save for 
light sieving through the scrim curtains. The night- 
nurse stood at the foot of the bed, silent, motion¬ 
less, in a stare of apparent anxiety. Never before 
had he wakened at this hour to find her here. 
Always, as if by rule, the day-nurse. Such sharp 
variance of routine must mean something!— 
“Cribbles, of course I” After long obedience to cus¬ 
tom change is suspect to the sick. He thought at 
once of Cribbles. After all, then, he wasn’t crazy 
-—damn him!- 

“Anything gone wrong, Miss Newlands?” 

“Nothing at all, sir”—she parted the curtains 
slightly—“I just looked in to make sure.” 

Thanks—fervently—yes, he’d had a splendid 
night. 

“Nothing disturbed you?” 

“No—until a moment since. I imagined I heard 
Cr—groans or shouting across the hall. Cuess that 
woke me.” 

“I was afraid it might, sir, and that you wouldn’t 
understand. That’s why I sneaked in. But you 
didn’t imagine the shout. It was real enough—to 
bring us all running.”—She could hardly tell it now 
for laughing.—“Miss Cwinett’s patient—the little 
jockey—Mr. Skethway—in a night-mare. Sitting 



THE CONVALESCENTS 143 

up in bed—yelling, top of his voice: ‘Come on, 
Nurse! Come on!’ Says he saw Miss Gwinett rid¬ 
ing in his stead at Pimlico. He couldn’t make out 
the horse, hut Gwin wore the sweater he’s seen her 
working on'—Black, white cuffs and collar. Mr. 
Skethway vows it’s a ‘hunch from heaven’ and we 
all must play it—the colors. I’m going down to 
the track, with a party of the night nurses. We’re 
starting right after breakfast, to make sure of good 
seats—^^and odds. I thought, sir, you might want to 
put something on the horse—unless we see it’s a 
regular cow and a hopeless stable.” 

“Even so-” 

“That’s what I say, sir.'—Bother the stable. Play 
the sweater.” 


That night, the racing-party getting back just in 
time to go on duty and miss their supper, there was 
much ice cream of divers flavors, eclairs, cream- 
puffs, ginger-ale and—altogether a very jolly party 
for a hospital. ... In the third race at Pimlico 
Miss Gwinett’s mount, freed from the burden of 
stable money, had loafed like the cow he looked 
for seven furlongs. Then something happened— 
heaven knows what!—and the sweater stretched 
into first money—to the stable’s disgust and in spite 
of the jockey’s best efforts to follow instructions. 
. , . Some very peculiar horses at Pimlico. 



144 the convalescents 

The episode made a deep impression on Car- 
tell. Perhaps, after all, Kricke was right. ‘No 
one has ever described them as they really are.’ 
. . . Still, It wouldn’t be easy—to write of ‘saints’ 
who were such good-lookers, good dancers, good 
sports. 

Franklin Lane had It In mind to do. In that last 
letter to his friends scrawled hurriedly In his brief 
villeglature from death he wrote: “Never before 
have I been called upon deliberately to walk Into 
the valley of the shadow, and, say what you will, 
It is a great act. ... A man with a little curiosity, 
a little humor, a little money, and not too much 
pain, could enjoy himself studying the ways of doc¬ 
tors and nurses as he journeyed along the invalid’s 
path.” 

So with almost every man who sojourns for a 
while In that strange companionship; comes the will 
and resolve to acclaim—somehow—the undreamed 
wonder of it. Begun In the ether’s twilight, com¬ 
plete twixt sun and sun: days, weeks and months of 
closest communion—and then, mostly, undone and 
over with as though It were but another trick of the 
drug. 

The impulse to record finds divers expression. 
Henley turned to jerky jingles: grateful but hepatic. 
Some, strange with letters, ease the urge through a 
hoop of gold. Thus, lately, Dorla-Pamphlll, heir 
of the Csssars, flouts half the royal purple of Europe 


THE CONVALESCENTS 145 

for some yards of witchery in white duck.^ Another 
puts his hosannas in a will; writes of “gratitude to 
science,” “debt to humanity,” but—dux femina 
facti I What the world takes for a philanthropic 
Foundation is, really, a sort of posthumous flirta¬ 
tion. And many a hospital wing, if the truth were 
known, is no more than a feather in some nurse’s 
cap. 

‘The motif of the story of the Italian Prince who married his 
trained nurse is nothing new. But the incident opens the way to 
a vast and hitherto untilled field of speculation. How can a 
woman, frail creature that she is, muster courage to marry a man 
she has nursed through a period of illness?—"On Second Thought” 
by Jay E. House. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE BLUE-GINGHAM TRAGEDY 

M r. KRICKE vantaged his next visit to the 
hospital to discover by ingenious inquiry the 
“prospects” of Number Seventy-three. The scant 
information he gleaned was disturbing; affected him 
so patently that, despite Miss Savile’s frowns and 
signals, Dr. Kreweson said, yes, he might see the 
patient: “very few minutes and very little talk.” 
So Kricke went to the point at once: 

“Have you started the book?” 

No. He hadn’t even thought about it. 

“Good! I’ve been thinking it over. Funny books 
aren’t selling. Too much humor, cheap, in the news¬ 
papers and movies. . . . We’ll make this thing sen¬ 
sational!” 

Cartell groaned inwardly, but it showed in his 
face. 

Kricke rushed to encourage: 

“We’ve started our publicity campaign. Press- 
notices about your being here—point-of-death—and 
that personal sort of thing.—How we’ve arranged 
for the right man to finish the work in case you— 
well, if—if—necessary.” 


146 


THE CONVALESCENTS 147 

He named the posthumous collaborator; an 
author of continental sensation at the moment, his 
latest novel having been “suppressed” by the Post- 
Office authorities and his next one advertised as pro¬ 
curable only by private subscription.—“We’re mak¬ 
ing a point, too, of the illustrations, done from life, 
under your personal supervision, here in the hospi¬ 
tal.—And I thought you might like to see this now 
—in case anything happens. You’ll know, anyway, 
how we’re doing it.” 

From a manila portfolio he displayed a large 
card-board, highly illuminated; he read aloud, tri¬ 
umphantly, the title flaring scarlet across the top:— 
“The Blue-Gingham Tragedy.” 

“What the devil’s all that?” 

“Cover-design for the book. It will come up 
stronger, of course, in the jacket.” 

But even now the sketch lacked nothing of the 
“strength” Kricke had in mind. It pictured, in flam¬ 
boyant hues, a young girl, almost child-like, of 
piquante prettiness; but ghastly pale, wan-eyed, 
hollow-cheeked, attenuated figure. She had fallen, 
crumpled, in attitude of uttermost lassitude, into a 
tall throne-chair with covering of crimson satin. 
One hand, adorned with a marquise ring, hung 
limply over an arm of the chair in final token of 
exhaustion. The scenic splendour of the chair, more 
than the tragic pallor of the occupant and the the¬ 
atrical posture, confused the observer. 

*^Some nurse, eh?” Kricke exulted. 


148 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“Yes, I rather thought she might be meant for 
some nurse—from that thermometer in her hand.” 

“That’s no thermometer. Cigarette. But if you 
don’t like it”—a gesture had intimated as much— 
“I’ll take it out.” 

Cartell surrendered the sketch, eagerly. 

“Do, please, Mr. Kricke. Take it out—all of it 
—quite out!” He looked, unconsciously, toward 
the door. 

“You wrong me,” Kricke hurried to reassure him. 
“I don’t mean what you think, by that cigarette; not 
my ‘Court-Scandals,’ nor ‘Bible Beauties.’ Even 
they aren’t selling at present. . . . Propaganda’s 
the thing just now. The up-lift is what I’m after— 
and the shake-down; revolt—reform—what Dick¬ 
ens did and Charles Reade and—and Tolstoy.— 
Look!”—pointing through the open door. “There 
you have it!” 

Eight or ten nurses trooped down the corridor In 
a carnival of color and fragrance; purple orchids in 
gilded baskets, white violets in wicker urns, long- 
stalked roses in bunches of unblushing extravagance, 
lurid azaleas in wicker distortions. Black-eyed 
Susans, and here and there a spindly geranium ob¬ 
viously from the side-walk market. And some well- 
meaning malaprop had sent a design of ghastly 
lilies, topped by a stuffed dove, that would do honor 
to a funeral-director. 

The parade halted at a closed door; conference. 
In whispers, smiles, head-shakes, suppressed giggles; 


THE CONVALESCENTS 149 

question, apparently, how the patient would react 
to the albino squab with its mortuary garniture. 

“Take those girls,’’ Kricke resumed excitedly. 
“Start in the kitchen—food they get!’’ 

“Pretty healthy set of girls,” Cartell declared. 
“All look as though they eat enough.” 

“No one eats enough nowadays, what with the 
high—— Good heavens, man, do you ever look at 
that little student-nurse?” 

“Twelve hours a day.” 

“And you don’t see what you could do with her 
—that fawn-eyed wisp of a girl? Another Oliver 
Twist! Only much worse than Oliver^—more touch¬ 
ing—because of the petticoats. And better material, 
all around, than Dickens had to work on. And a 
larger audience to appeal to, because more people 
go to hospitals than to poor-houses. You can’t deny 
that!” 

Cartell didn’t try to. 

“Show the hard life of these girls—show it up! 
The long, exhausting, nerve-wracking hours in body¬ 
wrecking work. The three years of service without 
pay; that calico dress—always same color and same 
style'—think what that must mean to a young 
woman!—And then the way the internes bully them 
—like regular Simon Degrees! And the awful 
operations they are compelled to see—and how the 
doctors blame them for their own blunders.—And 
how the patients nag them, from sheer cussedness. 
—And then all those stories that you hear about 



150 THE CONVALESCENTS 

the—^” and he maundered on into the sumps of 
gossip; stirred up miasms of morphia and subtler 
drugs; of quick, careless loves—furtive caresses— 
tragic entanglements—bacchic revels in the presence 
of death; all the shameless inventions that ribald 
tongues and rotten minds give out until it seems as 
though a mistaken deity must think he had set an 
example sufficient unto all their kind and for all 
time in the fate of Ananias and Sapphira. 

The patient paled in weariness, tossed and 
twisted. But Kricke, rapt by visions of a best-seller, 
kept at it, meandering from one side of the bed to 
the other, in pursuit of Cartell as the victim sought 
to rest, at least, an ear. Until, reaching a climax 
of mingled bathos and turpitude he asked tri¬ 
umphantly : 

“Now what do you say to that?” 

“Damn lies!” 

“O, if you put it that way-” 

“Best I can do, at present. Just plain—‘damn— 
lies!’ When my voice is stronger I’ll elaborate the 
adjective with a few heaven-defying adverbs, and 
I’ll shout them louder,”—he did, somewhat,—“a 
damn sight louder!” 

“Now, now, now,” Kricke stammered, rather 
alarmed, “don’t get excited—Of course, I don’t 
really know from my own experience-” 

“But you should”—Cartell broke in. “You’ve 
been coming here—often enough—to see—and to 
know—that this place—any place of this kind—is 





THE CONVALESCENTS 


151 

a sort of—well, as near heaven as you or I will ever 
get! These people here—all of them—doctors, in¬ 
ternes, nurses, orderlies, right on down the line to 
the humblest, are'—are—well, wait until you’re 
brought here some day, let’s hope—with a broken- 
neck or something really serious. Then you’ll know 
them as they really are—saints!” 

Kricke jumped at the word—back to the shop. 

“All right!” he agreed. “Make ’em saints^—in 
shining robes! But show the seamy side—the dust 
on the hems. It’s there, I’m telling you—from what 
I’ve always heard—and plenty others, too!” 

“Where, Kricke?”—he was enraged now by the 
man’s insistence.—“Where in hell do they get that 
—stuff?” 

Miss Savile came in, quickly: 

“You’re wanted, sir”—to Kricke—“at the 

’phone.” 

When he reached for the ’phone, in the hall. Miss 
Savile intervened: 

“It was only I, sir, who wanted you. My patient 
has talked too much today. You get him so— 
interested. He raised his voice, you know, and 
probably his temperature. That won’t do, sir.” 

“I thought I’d stir him up. I want to get him out 
of here.” 

“You will indeed, sir, if this keeps up. I’ll get 
your hat.” 

“ ‘I’ll get your hat,’ he mumbled to himself at the 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


152 

outer door. The nerve of her—and with those baby 
eyes!” 

Mr. Kricke had to leave in a hurry, she explained 
to the patient. She was sorry to interrupt the con¬ 
versation: “You seemed to be enjoying it so thor¬ 
oughly.” 

Cartell’s reply was rather irrelevant: “In a way, 
you’re like Miss Drizzle.” 

“Who is she, sir?” 

“A quick ‘pick-up’—Mr. Kricke says—and very 
sympathetic.” 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE MAGNIFICENT MADNESS OF 
CAPTAIN JIM 


O FTEN, after leaving the hospital, Gribbles 
came back to call on Cartell. No one ever 
saw him enter, nor caught his talk with the sick 
man. He timed his visits cunningly; the twilight 
hours, while Miss Savile was at supper; or the grim 
stretches of a wakeful night, when the tremulous 
lamp behind the screen peopled the walls with 
shadow giants among whom the caller might pass 
unnoticed if Miss Newlands happened in. 

Gribbles’ message was set in phrase and point; 
repeated, over and over, in ghostly undertones, what 
he had told Cartell on the Porch. 

The words had haunted with fiendish persistence, 
despite Miss Savile’s heroic invention. Gribbles 
jeered at it—the union of ‘hetero’ and ‘hypochon¬ 
driasis’ !—“A forced marriage, at the pistol-point, 
to save the nurse’s chart from bar-sinister,” the 
ghost was snarling when the Captain brought in the 
evening papers and the box of cigars he had fetched 
for the patient. 

Cartell winced at his greeting: 

153 


154 THE CONVALESCENTS 

‘‘You’ll be leaving us soon, sir.” 

“So Cribbles has been telling me,” the patient 
doled. 

“We’ll be sorry to lose you.” 

“Thank you. Captain.” 

“I’ll certainly miss you, sir.” 

“I’ll miss myself,” he mumbled. 

“Where do you think you’ll go?” 

Voice failing him, a shrug of helplessness an¬ 
swered for Cartell. 

“Some warm place. I’d suggest.” 

‘So does Cribbles.—Don’t bother to open those 
‘Rufus Choates’ ”•- 

I didn t bring the ‘Choates,’ sir. They didn’t 
look fit. They never have since the Syndic grabbed 
them^ and pinched out a third of the tobacco. I took 
the liberty to bring instead these ‘Mercutio’s.’ Run¬ 
ning very good, of late. They’re no longer popular, 
and they’ve improved immensely.” 

Take the box with you. Captain. Enjoy them. 

I shan’t ever want them.” 

“Why, sir?—Have they cut out your tobacco?” 

No, but and to the Captain prompting, he 
blurted, shamefaced, his dread and omens. 

But that s too absurd, sir! Out of all reason I 
Unconstitutional!—We’re not losing patients this 
year.” 

“There’s always a first,” Cartell sighed. “And I 
have a presentiment-” 

“Yes, but you also have Miss Savile!” the Cap- 




THE CONVALESCENTS 15 5 

tain broke in. “What’s a presentiment against her? 
Or, in her absence, Miss Newlands? And all this 
environment of youth and beauty? You couldn’t go 
wrong with that!” 

Cartell took it for kindly^ if futile, fooling. But 
the Captain’s tone was intensely serious and certain. 

“Why, sir, to fail us now, you’d have to defy 
every precedent. In my long experience in this hos¬ 
pital,” he went on with calm assurance, “I do not 
recall one case that ended badly if entrusted to a 
handsome nurse, even though young and inexperi¬ 
enced.” 

“Possibly they don’t get the desperate cases.” 

“They got yours I And they should, sir, get every 
desperate case. They always do here, if I can pos¬ 
sibly contrive it. Mostly I can, with luck and a little 
manoeuvering, which the results fully justify. If 
anything can revivify a man in collapse—awake the 
will-to-live—and that’s a mighty force I—it is the 
presence of pulchritude. That, sir, is among the 
most potent elements of the vis~natura~medicatrix. 
—Have a ‘Mercutio.’ ” 

Cartell lighted the perfecto. The talk, for all its 
droll extravagance, was, somehow, soothing. 

The Captain enlarged upon his theory: cited 
antique authority and immediate instances. He 
held, clearly, the pagan faith in the efficacy of grace, 
the alchemy of beauty. In the light of that faith 
he had come upon a curious material science. 
Kallitherapy, he named it. 


156 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Cartell ventured to question the essential premise 
of the system: 

“You can’t presume every nurse to be positively 
beautiful.” 

“ ’Tisn’t required, sir, in the minor cases; not in 
that degree. Sufficient, there, if she be no worse 
than merely plain. Against that the costume can 
hold its own. But for the man in extremis, with bad 
heart-action and faint ralliance, no nurse should be 
positively ugly. Stands to reason, sir. ’Tisn’t con¬ 
stitutional!—If, at this moment, you still survive, 
enjoying that ‘Mercutio’-” 

“Immensely, thanks to you-” 

The Captain disclaimed it. To Miss Savile, the 
credit, to Miss Newlands, and, in equal degree, to 

this nurse and that, who by their mere presence- 

“That is all-sufficient. ’Tisn’t what they do 1 It’s 
what they are—radio-active I Reservoirs of Light, 
tangible, palpable, even measurable. Gamma-rays 
in blue-gingham 1” 

He had proved it, to his own satisfaction, not only 
by intimate observation but by the familiar device of 
Sir William Crookes. And he looked for general 
conviction to the recent refinements of the Dewar 
machine. 

Only a few days ago he had seen his theory prac¬ 
tised, even though not acknowledged, by Fenway 
and Hampden. A case of anaemia that persisted 
unresponsive, stubborn, stone-cold to three blood- 
transfusions. The physicians stood perplexed; all 





THE CONVALESCENTS 157 

the conditions promised response, and yet the 
patient in the last stages of collapse. And the nurse 
in charge was one in the last stages of efficiency; 
selected, with jealous care, by the patient’s wife. 

Then it was that the Captain, presuming on his 
high age and regard, dared greatly: suggested— 
to these famed physicians!—still more blood. Not 
in the patient, but the nurse! So he phrased it— 
too gallant a gentleman to speak plainly of her 
plainness: her time-faded cheek, lack-lustre eye, 
huffish locks, her laggard, listless step. And he 
dared further: Since the patient was dark, let the 
nurse be blonde, and preferably—he raved—a 
student-nurse, not only for the sake of the youth but 
for the blue-gingham, whereby the peach-pink com¬ 
plexion will show to the full, and the azure eye, and 
the glint of the hair, and all the brilliance of blonde 
beauty! He spoke with fanatic fervor, and his 
hearers pitied him—‘dear, old Captain’—and 
humored him. 

There had been so many changes in the treatment 
of the baffling case, nothing else remained to change 
except the nurse. “Can’t hurt, may help.” They 
selected Miss Gwinett who happened to conform 
most nearly to the Captain’s specifications. 

When the physicians looked in that evening, the 
patient was sitting up in bed and taking notice—not 
so much of his supper-tray as of the Hebe who 
brought it. The crisis was over, safely. 

The doctors came from the room, smiling like 


158 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Cheshire cats. As they went by the Captain he 
dared the limit. “Who’s looney now?” he asked 
them, with all due deference and a wink. 

Therein, perhaps, lies the “mystery” of Captain 
Forrester: his extravagant, fantastic theory of 
feminine loveliness and its virtues of therapy. Sane 
on all other subjects, here he was hipped, obsessed, 
moon-struck.—Time, of course, may contradict this 
■—just as In the case of Galileo, Harvey, Langley. 
Meanwhile, his delusion evolved delightful fancies. 
He visioned, among these nurses, the world’s most 
famous beauties: the Idols of the theatre, the ideals 
of the palette in conceit or portraiture. 

“Miss Klllarney might have sat for Carlo Dolcl’s 
Madonna—If you recall It, sir, In the UffizI gallery 
at Florence. Sometimes I think she knows it; she 
can dance divinely—delights to—but won’t!'—That 
tall, statuesque Miss De Lancy—Mary Anderson, 
over again, as Perdita; her blue-gingham very like 
the costume of Perdita^s rustic dance. And when 
our young lady dons the white of the graduate, 
you’ll find the resemblance transform to Mary’s 
Hermione .—In the Rospigllosi palace. In Rome, you 
will see Miss Trenholm’s portrait—painted by 
Guido RenI—In the guise of Aurora.^—Miss Conde, 
the Bishop’s daughter, is Boucher’s La Pompadour; 
the lambent glance, the pastel tints, the poise of the 
head.—Nell Gwynne’s rakish eyes, half-closed by 
wrinkling laughter, peer from beneath Miss Beau- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 159 

clerc’s cap.—^Cosway’s Lady Manners bequeathed 
her prim prettiness to Miss Newlands.—There, 
half-reclining on the garden-bench, you have David’s 
Julie Recamier—in the person of Miss Winsten. 
Nearby, swinging in the hammock, is twin sister to 
Sir Joshua’s Nelly O’Brien.—Miss Audenrieth’s 
features might be irregular,—yet Sargent chose to 
paint them for his Carmencita.” 

In the spacious gallery of his imagination every 
nurse hung “on the line”—copies incarnate of Van¬ 
dyke’s Marchese Balbi—Reynolds’ Anne Bingham 
—Henner’s Daniela—Laurence’s Miss Croker— 
Raeburn’s Mrs. Bell—Fragonard’s Louise Lam- 
balle, Landseer’s Marchioness of Abercorn—Botti¬ 
celli’s Ariadne- 

“And Miss Savile, sir,'—^you’ve seen her in a sulk, 
of course?” 

“Never,” Cartell rejoiced, “not even a pout.” 
“Oh, then you’ve missed something—the gem of 
our gallery: Greuze at his best—‘La Cruche 
Cassee’! You won’t get it, sir, when the little lady 
is serene; but pouting, frowning, fretted—as when 
she’s let fall a noisy clamp or fragile flask, and been 
scolded for it—‘The Broken Pitcher’ steps to life I” 
From the talk at Mrs. Moncrieff’s table a phrase 
recurred to Cartell:— 

“A comet-vintage of blue-gingham I” 

*^Une specialite de la maison/^ Forrester con¬ 
tinued the metaphor. . . . “In my time they’ve all 
been here, sir,—every one, almost, except the Mona 



i6o THE CONVALESCENTS 

Lisa. WeVe been denied her. And that isn’t mere 
luck, sir I A conscious Providence looking out for 
the helpless. Think of some poor patient having 
to endure Lisa’s smirking simper day after day— 
and no chance of escape I Why, sir, even in the full 
vigor of youth, I used to shun the gallery of the 
Louvre where Lisa hung. I’ve read, lately, that the 
stolen canvas has been replaced by a counterfeit, but 
that it ‘lacks something of the inimitable smile.’ 
What a blessing, sir! She might have turned up 
here, some day.” 

By rule, seemingly, the Captain chose his simili¬ 
tudes from the palettes of the elect and matched 
them, with professional purpose, almost exclusively 
from the nurses’ corps. 

But, occasionally, he hung a convalescent. Never, 
though, unless he had reason to believe that her 
beauty was exercising along the lines of his theory 
of therapy. Then, for some reason, he would for¬ 
sake the antique or classic and turn for likeness to a 
canvas of the moment, taken from a dealer’s win¬ 
dow, or an Academy exhibit, or a magazine-cover. 

Lately he astonished the personnel by announcing 
the presence on the Porch of Marie Jeritza—^just 
then in her first flight at the Metropolitan—and 
directed their inquiring gaze to a glowing copy in 
the flesh of Arthur Halmi’s portrait. . . . The 
patient’s first appearance in public—that day—after 
some particularly cunning magic of surgery. And 
yet the sapphire of her eyes, the glint of the hair, 


THE CONVALESCENTS i6i 

the rich carmine of cheek, and the richer cerise of 
lip flashed the electricity with which Jeritza shocked 
her rivals of the opera. 

You must come to a hospital to see Nature at her 
best . . . her genius of surprise, her artful con¬ 
fusion of some of her own laws, her mocking of that 
age-old wheeze about “the weaker sex.” Though 
her one hand excarnate her afflicted daughter, the 
other will incarnadine the remnant with the blush 
and sparkle of triumphant youth. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE CASE OF THE TWO LILLY’S—AND 

SOME OTHERS 

Being Excerpts from Captain Forrester^s Unpub^ 
lished Volume: *‘The Therapeutics of Pulchritude; 
with \a Consideration of Feminine Loveliness as a 
Manifestation of Radio-Activity^ 

O F the curative potencies of Beauty the writer 
became convinced by long observation and 
experience in circumstances peculiarly fortunate. 
He does not pretend to discovery of the truth; only 
re-discovery. It is older than trephining. In a 
papyrus of 1553 B.C. an Egyptian physician pro¬ 
claims his employment of Beauty as a “healing 
power.” Hippocrates counted Beauty an element of 
the spiritual restoring essence— phusis—the vis 
medicatrix natura —on which he based his principles 
and praxis. 

He was the fashionable physician of his day, and 
none of his prescriptions found quicker credence, 
even among the wisest and most skeptical. So that 

^ Since the above went to press Captain Forrester’s volume has 
been announced for publication by the well-known house of Bodley 
Kricke: elaborately illustrated, in three colors, by Kevan Varrey. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 163 

Beauty was not merely the diversion of the gay, the 
witty, the voluptuary; wisdom and philosophy cor¬ 
rect beyond the hurt of edacious centuries courted 
her companionship as an elixir. . . . Aristotle and 
Socrates falling ill at the same time, tourneyed for 
the services of a certain Theodota. . . . Plato, for 
all his sonorous nonsense about the ideal love, 
always took shelter in the house of Archeanassa 
when he happened to get caught out in the rain, and 
usually “dashed off” impromptu verses to celebrate 
her system of curing a cold. . . . Sophocles wrote 
nothing more impassioned than his prayer that little 
Theoris might not jilt his sciatica for the lumbagO' 
of Demosthenes, who at the first twinge sent her an 
autographed copy of his latest works^—the literary 
man’s usual substitute for the roses, bonbons and 
brooches of merely rich wooers. . . . 

And there’s the case of Menander and his nurse. 
When Ptolemy offered him brilliant prizes to attach 
himself to the court of Alexandria, the poet did not 
blush to answer that he could not leave his Thalatta, 
‘who alone could soothe his sickness-of-the-head.’ 

‘Bring her with you,’ the King suggested. ‘No, 
no!’ he said. ‘That would deprive others of her 
ministrations. I’m not the only man in Athens who 
gets headaches.’ 

It is to be regretted that this unselfish sentiment 
does not obtain generally. Some precious nurses 
would thus be saved to science from matrimony— 
a state that is notoriously deadly to radio-activity. 


164 THE CONVALESCENTS 

For the purpose of my theory, a nurse married is a 
nurse marred. 

Modernly, the virtue of Beauty as an agent of 
therapy has received scant notice from the members 
of the medical profession. Indeed, consideration of 
the subject has rested almost wholly with philoso¬ 
phers, dilettanti and quacks. And yet certain 
familiar facts cannot have escaped the faculty: 
Les-droIts-du-SeIgneur, Invoked primarily to redden 
the blue blood of an anaemic aristocracy; and the 
homelier practice among folk who live close to the 
soil, not only In Europe but In the backwoods of this 
country, where buxom youth Is brought In as a last 
resort to assuage the ravages of age. 

Professor Norton of Harvard suspected the 
affinity of health and Beauty, and hints It in his 
definition of the latter. Apparently he reached this 
conclusion through pure Intelligence. The Cam¬ 
bridge of his day did not conduce to experimental 
work In the subject; Cambridgeport still less. And 
the standard of Boston, near-by, was so peculiar to 

the locale as to be useless for scientific generaliza¬ 
tion. 

Curiously enough, the most daring pioneer in this 
field was an Irish politician with the temperament 
of the Athenian and the pragmatism of the Roman: 
Edmund Burke was on his way to the ultimate truth 
in “The Sublime and Beautiful.” He might have 


THE CONVALESCENTS 165 

gone all the way, perhaps, had his century known 
a Becquerel or Madame Curie. 

Before his time—and, in the main, since, too— 
Beauty has wallowed in a sea of spuming theoretics; 
tossed and tumbled from the crest of psychology to 
the trough of metaphysics. Burke brought it into 
the calmer currents of physiology. He saw Beauty 
to be a purely physical force, acting mechanically, 
with physiologic results. Venus he reduces to a 
glorified masseuse, suffused with some exhilarant 
force that needs not the actual laying-on of hands. 

Others took up the clue'—notably Helmholtz and 
Grant Allen—and searched for the physiological 
concomitants of the works. Later, Fechner made 
laboratory experiments in the same direction.^ But 
the secret eluded them: remained literally the 
needle-point of radium in a mountain of pitch¬ 
blende. 

Burke, far beyond any of his time, studied his 
subject at first hand. He learned, by passionate de¬ 
votion to his purpose and fearless personal adven¬ 
ture, just what Beauty does to a body—to blood, 
muscles and nerves. What he himself missed he 
gathered from the experiences of his eclectic group 
of cronies: the actor Garrick, Sam Johnson, Rey¬ 
nolds, Soame Jenyns, Littleton, Marquis Rocking¬ 
ham—all plain-thinkers but high-livers; three-bottle 
men, of full-habit. So he knew intimately what he 
was talking about, and so could make others know. 

‘Vide; “Vorschule der Aesthetik” (1876). 


166 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Which is more than can be said, honestly, of the 
Herbartians and Hegelians and Kantians. 

Yet they ranged so far in the quest, over so many 
fields and diverse, it is strange none stumbled into 
the lighted path. It lay under their philological 
nose, lucent in almost every phrase of their discus¬ 
sions. 

As a form of Light men have always sensed 
Beauty, naturally and spontaneously, and so termed 
it. Beauty to the Greeks was Light— dglaia: to the 
Latins pulcher: to the Teutons— schoen, Plotinus 
makes Light synonymous with Beauty and dwells on 
their common quality of “spatial diffusion,” an idea 
borrowed, I need not tell you, from Plato’s “Re¬ 
public.” 

From the light of her eye the houri of the East¬ 
erns takes her name—and fortune. Lacking that, 
she is not beautiful in their sight. In all else she 
may conform to their immemorial rule of Fours, but 
without that candent essence—so they know it— 
she may not enter the Paradise of the faithful nor 
the zenana of the mighty. And her rank in the 
harem is apportioned to the power of the light: the 
horse-power, one might say. The Orientals, ex¬ 
quisitely sensitivized by time and with the occult lore 
of the Magi at their finger-ends, take the measure 
of the houri intuitively, with no need of mechanics. 
—A vain imagining, we shall presently discover. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 167 

Conventionally we speak of Beauty as splendid, 
brilliant, sparkling, flashing, beaming, lustrous, 
glowing, garish, dazzling, delightful, radiant— 
above all, radiant I Always it strikes us, mechani¬ 
cally, in terms of light and radiation. The blonde 
is the arch troubler—ideal and adagial—not by rea¬ 
son of any superiority of line or temper, but because 
her color-scheme'—gold of hair, blue of eye, pink of 
skin—radiates light more freely than the darker 
surfaces of the brunette.^ 

This may be proved, beyond cavil, by noting the 
relative activity of a Crookes’ radiometer in the 
presence of a blonde and of a brunette. 

Regard, too, that without light there is not 
Beauty. Mere suavity of color is something,—the 
Stoics made much of color, as did Cicero and 
Xenophon—and grace of line and correct features; 
but by themselves, without illumination, we name 
them cold, dull, logy, dollish, wishy-washy, phleg¬ 
matic, fishy. “Faultily faultless, icily regular”—but 
null! 

And by the same token there may be fascination 
in the freckled cheek, the squat nose, thickish lips, 
the rebel hair, even brick-red—if only there be light 
within! And usually with this last, there is. Light 
redundant, that flames from the molten iron of the 
blood into the glowing tresses, flecks the satin skin 
with freckles, flashes out in the iris. . . . That type 

*Vide: Nirdlinger’s “The Superstition About Brunettes” in his 
volume of theatrical studies entitled: “Masques and Mummers.” 


168 THE CONVALESCENTS 

mates early—and surely. The red-haired old-maid 
is a rare bird. 

In forty years of hospital service I encountered 
among the nurses only one such instance. And my 
theory of radio-activity received no setback from her 
eccentric and self-imposed spinsterhood; her cases 
prospered amazingly. 

For that phenomenon there was nothing to ac¬ 
count except her luminal activity. In form and 
feature she was not actively beautiful; rather retro¬ 
active. In the ordinary activities of her profession 
as a nurse she was crudely equipped and notably 
careless. Yet she served brilliantly. 

In the practice of kallitherapy the predilection of 
the patient is always a factor to be considered; the 
type to which the man constitutionally responds: 
blonde, brunette, chataine or rufous. 

A striking instance in point, occurring at the 
B. M. H., came to be known among the hospital- 
staff as ‘the case of the two Lilly’s’—Mrs. Langtry 
and Miss Russell—each in charge of a desperate 
case. . . . Oh, yes, they had those famous beauties 
there—in copy, of course—several times during the 
decades of their vogue.—May I divert to doubt that 
their lusty style would hold a candle to the present 
delicacies of line and color. Theirs was the period 
of the ox-eyed and peroxide.—Both cases were go¬ 
ing very badly: practically given up. Then, by 
some chance rather than design, the nurses changed 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


169 

posts; the dark Mrs. Langtry took Miss RusselFs 
blonde patient, and vice-versa. Magical I In five 
days the patients were on their feet—rand, inci¬ 
dentally, proposing marriage. 

In this ‘case of the two Lilly’s’ the test of the 
Crookes’ radiometer was rather negative; the 
machine responded impartially to the olive tints and 
to the peach. 

Further corroboration of this theory followed the 
most ingenious experiment of recent science—and 
the most ingenuous blunder; a characteristic ex¬ 
ample at once of scientific insight and oversight. 

During the Ophthalmological Congress at Ox¬ 
ford there was shown an instrument whereby the 
light emanating from the human eye may be pre¬ 
cisely measured. The invention,—hailed, and 
properly, as epochal—consists of a brass cylinder in 
which hangs a tenuous spiral of copper wire. This 
solenoid is wound upon a cylinder of celluloid and 
is suspended by a fibre of cocoon silk contained 
within a long glass tube hermetically sealed. A 
small magnet holds the solenoid in position, and the 
apparatus is electrically earthed by a connective 
wire. 

The report of the experiment at Oxford stated 
that when the inventor ^ gazed steadily through the 
window-slot at one end of the suspended body it 
would start into motion away from the observer’s 

' Dr. Charles Russ, M. B., M. R. C. S., L. R. C. P. 


170 THE CONVALESCENTS 

eye. When he looked at the true centre it stopped; 
if he gazed at the opposite end it moved in the re¬ 
verse direction. 

From this it was deduced, and not unreasonably, 
that there was an actual transmission of power from 
the eye; some form of molecular vibration or atomic 
emanation analogous, presumably, to heat or light. 

With the aid of a deft electrician, the writer con¬ 
structed an instrument conforming as nearly as may 
be to the specifications quoted above. And when 
subjected to the glance of the human eye, it be¬ 
haved quite after the fashion reported from Oxford. 

Extending the experiments, it appeared that the 
motion of the suspended body varied markedly with 
different eyes, being much more prompt of response 
in some cases than in others. Under certain eyes 
its movement became quite eccentric: even violent. 
It was noted, too, that the machine was apparently 
susceptible to color, the vibration varying with the 
hue of the observing iris. 

Now intervened one of those happy accidents that 
Science occasionally stumbles over and either breaks 
its neck or kicks up a precious nugget. 

A nurse temporarily disabled by some nervous 
affection of the eyes so that they had to be blind¬ 
folded was led into the room to hear something of 
the experiments to which several of her colleagues 
had contributed. As she approached the machine 
it at once resumed its oscillation, though completely 


THE CONVALESCENTS 171 

Insulated from any ocular influence. With each step 
nearer, the motion grew livelier. 

The suggestion was obvious. Every nurse in turn 
was again placed before the machine, hut this time 
with her eyes tightly closed. 

“Eppure si muove!”—the machine. 

There was still a possibility that the ocular 
emanation had pierced the closed eye-lids. So the 
experiment was repeated with a thick pewter tray 
interposed between the subject and the object. 

And still the machine moved! 

In each case, too, the degree of motion was the 
same as when the nurse’s eye was in unobstructed 
play upon the solenoid, and varied identically as 
did the radiometer In the presence of the various 
nurses. 

The deduction was Inescapable: the propulsive 
force did not'^ come from the eye; or, at least, no 
more than from the generating agent In Its entirety. 
Which dispels the curious delusion of the Orientals 
who have vainly Imagined for ages that the “can- 
dent essence” of the hourl asserts Itself solely 
through the eye. 

* This view of the validity of the Oxford demonstration is shared 
by Dr. George B. Pegram, dean of the School of Engineering of 
Columbia University, according to the New York Evening Post. 
A similar experiment, some years ago by M. Blondlot of Paris, 
was flouted by a famous physicist of Johns Hopkins University. 
But it remained for Capt. Forrester to pursue the “eye-force” to 
its lair and to prove by actual physical demonstration that, like the 
Irishman’s flea, it was somewhere else. 


172 THE CONVALESCENTS 

With these evidences of personal pulchritude as a 
manifestation of radio-activity—the carnation of 
carnotite—we may well advert to the unscientific 
ordering of the nurse’s training. 

These young women are put through three years 
of a grilling pace—to prove their learning, zeal, 
intelligence, health and general character. Which is 
well enough; quite constitutional. 

But the wear and tear of their physical graces-— 
what havoc the hard novitiate may work to their 
beauty—no thought is taken of that!—though it 
touches the most precious quality of all that they 
bring to their calling. 

License to practice is given, or withheld, without 
the slightest regard to the accidents of their per¬ 
sonal appearance. In general, I believe, the authori¬ 
ties, and even more the public, incline to favor the 
less favored. Which, in my theory, is literally un¬ 
constitutional. . . . 

Yet that spirit, one fears, informs the probation. 
The climb to the License is made steep, bleak and 
rocky H needlessly so. Instead, the road to the 

* Captain Forrester exaggerates the rigors of the probation. The 
student-nurse is on duty only twelve hours at a stretch, except when 
an “emergency case” may require an additional six or eight hours 
of service. ^ The rest of the day, save for the enjoined period of 
sleep, she is foot-loose except for a few hours of study and lec¬ 
tures. _ The subjects in which she must become proficient before 
receiving license to nurse—after three years of actual nursing in 
a hospital—include: Hygiene and sanitation, materia medica 
bandaging, the principles and practice of nursing, the composition 
and dietetic value of foods, principles of general and invalid cook¬ 
ing, operating-room technique, massage, anatomy and phvsioloev 
bacteriology. ^ 


THE CONVALESCENTS 173 

Registry should be primrose; or at least daisied with 
such diversions as obtain even in a Normal College. 
The fare might well include an occasional leaven 
of ambrosia and nectar as being more conducive to 
vibrance than oatmeal, prunes and goulasch: sturdy 
but sombre. The matter of attire may safely be 
left to their own fancy; few would abjure blue- 
gingham. ... In all things the calling of the nurse 
should be made so alluring by its environs, rewards 
and prestige that beautiful women would be drawn 
to it instead of to the stage. From that angle one 
visions Beauty directed by the State, for the gen¬ 
eral good, just as radium is coming to be and as the 
ballet continues to be in Russia. 


To members of the Medical Profession who may 
hesitate to employ Kallitherapy in their practice, the 
writer begs to say that he submitted the manuscript 
of this volume to the famous Dr. Fenway, with a 
request that he destroy It after reading if he found 
the theory to be untenable or its application perilous. 
Instead, he returned it to the author with this con¬ 
clusive endorsement: 

“Can’t hurt. May help.” 


CHAPTER XVI 


A CLINIC OF MODES, MANNERS AND 

MOTIVES 


M ISS LEDYARD, of Pembroke County,” the 
nurse had introduced her on her first en¬ 
trance to the Club. 

There were cliques in The Porch, of course, as 
in all clubs: some quick intimacies, with established 
rendezvous in farthest corners. The convalescent’s 
chair had wheeled, seemingly of its own volition, to 
a group of the nurse’s shrewd selection. Miss 
Beauclerc, though thoroughly imbued with the de¬ 
mocracy of the place, never quite accepted the 
careless “mixing” of convalescents. It wasn’t a 
matter of ‘class’—Psychosis I Her present charge 
required, above all else, diversion and distraction, 
and she’d most likely get it in the company that cen¬ 
tered about the Contessa and the Veiled-Lady. 

Interest and admiration buzzed about the new 
member. Something of the history of the case may 
have transpired, in that strange way that tells things 
in a hospital without the spoken word. But quite 
by herself, apart from any hint of adventure. Miss 
Ledyard prevailed by a quality confusing, elusive, 

174 


THE CONVALESCENTS 175 

mykifylng: suggesting infinite changefulness and 
sudden possibilities. “The sort of woman’’—the 
Gontessa Bianchi described her—“that only one 
man In the world ever really knows.—And most of 
the time she’ll keep him guessing.” 

Her beauty was unassertive, the insinuating har¬ 
mony of vague colorings compassed in chataln. 

Much given to reverie. That may have prompted 
the Contessa’s judgment—and the far-away look 
of her eyes, and an air of unconscious detachment 
from her surroundings. Her smile, faint, wistful 
almost to sombreness, accorded with a voice of 
softest cadence and yet capable—^you somehow 
Imagined—of flashing suddenly Into passionate 
storm and swearing richly. A creature, altogether, 
rare, perturbing, confounding, delightful. 

So that one Impulsive gentleman having failed to 
touch her heart by the usual devices touched It with 
a Derringer; barely touched It^—grazed, rather—by 
the will of heaven or the button of a camisole. One 
or both turned the missile to a minor operation, and 
the tragedy to a mere “accident.” Which Miss 
Ledyard seemed to remember so pleasantly that she 
enjoined her nurse to be sure to secure the bullet 
from the surgeons; she hoped to return it, some day, 
to the owner. 

Miss Beauclerc, being of the same county as her 
patient—-and knowing the ancient courtesies there 
—saw especial need of mental diversion. 

Margot Allyn was of the party today—sharing 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


176 

their tea and cinnamon-toast freely until Mrs. 
Moncrieff, joining the group later, glared reminder 
that visitors weren’t supposed—nor permitted—to 
do anything of the sort—a glass of water being the 
limit of exception. But Margot meanwhile had 
been giving full ecot of entertainment. 

The theme that intrigued her so persistently, 
merely ennuied Miss Ledyard. It was all so per¬ 
fectly obvious to her thinking: Women loathe by 
nature monotony, humdrum, common-place. Most 
of them—by order of Providence or the male’s 
good-luck—haven’t the wit to escape it. The rest 
—the restless rest—go with the urge to career: 
stage, palette, letters, convent, nurse’s-bench—any¬ 
thing to get out of the ordinary. “All else failing,” 
—her voice trailed to wistfulness—“they become 
plain hellion.” And as for the occasional romance 
—Margot ha-ha-ed the ‘occasional!’—why, a man 
may be brought to love by show of interest—real 
or pretended—in the color of his cravat, the cut 
of his hair—his choice of a menu—the make of his 
car—his view on books, plays, music, the Balkan 
puzzle or the Pragmatic Sanction.—Here he meets 
a girl—chance acquaintance—whose one concern, 
for the moment, is his very life- 

“Yes, yes, but it’s that uniform that does the 
trick,” Margot interrupted—“that cunning costume 
—literally cunning, believe me. And men can’t see 
through it!” 

“No, they can’t see through it,” Miss Ledyard 



THE CONVALESCENTS 177 

repeated, quizzlngly. “That may be secret of it 
all—the trick of it—that simple, primitive dress 
with its ankle-length skirt and long sleeve and high- 
buttoned waist.” 

“Right you are!” the Contessa applauded: 
“He’s tired of counting the vertebras in her spinal 
column, down to her waist-line, and a bone or two 
below in a new Callot model they were showing me. 
—He doesn’t get excited over her sharing with him 
—^and every Tom, Dick and Harry—^bosom-secrets 
that belong only to her husband and her babies. 

“They’re fed up with women’s clothes that they 
can see in—and through—and over'—and under. 
Because when she crosses her B-V-D’s—and we all 
do!—lean or fat, spindly or gracile, lace, silk or 
cotton—what’s left to his imagination is so—so— 
well, her husband could never get divorce on the 
grounds the goods weren’t as represented: he sees 
about all he’s going to get before he gets it.—And 
as for the lure and witchery of the shaved arm- 
pit-” 

“Oh, my dear!” 

“Yes, it is almost too intime to talk about. But 
if you imagine that fascinates—well. I’ll bet that 
nine times out of ten when she thinks that far-off 
look is rapture, he’s only wondering if the job was 
done by a Gillette or the old-style Durham, and 
whether she had the barber in or did it herself with 
the safety.” 

“But there’s always some reason for a fashion,” 



178 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Margot generalized weakly. “Don’t you suppose a 
woman’s intuition tells her what to do, in such 
matters?” 

“Certainly! Perhaps that’s why the girls took to 
wearing their hair over their ears—so they couldn’t 
possibly hear what intuition was telling them. Con¬ 
cealment!” 

For retort Margot grasped at the accepted 
phrases: 

“Mock modesty!” 

“Better than none!—And for all practical pur¬ 
poses,” the Contessa confided, ‘^as good as the real 
thing. Men don’t know the difference—and trying 
to find out is one of his traditional diversions and 
makes a lot of marriages.” 

Miss Conde showing in the door-way, Margot 
beckoned her to the group: “Get in on this con¬ 
versazione !” 

“Cat-fight!” the Contessa translated, and re¬ 
peated the theme: “Why girls leave home—for 
hospitals?” 

They knew, of course, in her case, Margot as¬ 
sured the nurse:—“Bred in the bone, call of the 
blood—this sort of thing—carries on the family- 
business, in a way.—But take a girl like that Miss 

Sa-” She stopped at a faint but unmistakable 

stamp of Miss Conde’s foot. 

The personal point Margot replaced with acuter 
bluntness of expression. The theme, apparently, 
obsessed her. At sight of a nurse—white or blue— 



THE CONVALESCENTS 179 

she saw red. A phenomenon by fio means unusual; 
actually typical according to Professor Talapoff, the 
Finnish savant. In his book on “The Nurse- 
Impulse’’ he resumes his talks on the subject with 
nearly three thousand women, all classes, countries 
and ages, and in almost every instance the view re¬ 
corded was essentially that of Margot as she had 
just intimated it. 

There might be an occasional exception, she 
granted. “But in most cases—own up. Miss Conde I 
—it’s just the good old game—Cherchez-l’homme. 
—That’s what’s back of it—I’ll tell the world.— 
Man-hunt I” 

Miss Conde flushed crimson: half-turned on her 
heel, but swung back, smiling and apparently 
calmed. 

“O, men aren’t so rare and precious as all that I 
A woman doesn’t have to make herself into a com¬ 
bination house-maid, cook, laundress, bath-attend¬ 
ant, child’s-nurse, masseuse, doctor, minister and, 
sometimes, assistant-undertaker, and keep it up three 
solid years, bound by rules and regulations as to her 
coming-in and going-out and what she should wear 
—in order to get the chance to grab a scared, 
scarred male-specimen when he’s too weak to fight 
back. If you tell me that some girls go in for nurs¬ 
ing,—just as some women take to the stage or 
settlement-work or tea-shops—in order to ‘live their 
life,’ ‘be on their own’—free and independent to do 
as they darn please when they’re off duty, why, I’ll 


i8o 


THE CONVALESCENTS' 


listen to the rot.—But don’t ask me to believe that 
a girl like Miss Savile—or that perfectly corking 
Miss Trenholm^—can’t find a man outside this 
morgue-annex.” 

Until this very last she had spoken evenly and 
amusedly; but now her voice trembled under the 
pull of repression, and she left them abruptly as 
though sensing her temper was getting out of hand. 

The little storm hardly breezed Margot’s con¬ 
viction : 

“There’s always something back of it—^believe 
me I—You suppose she^s here of her own choice ?” 

“Not likely,” Miss Ledyard agreed. “Heredity 
probably had to drag her here by the hair.—And did 
you ever see such a gorgeous tint? Pure Hennerl” 

“Henner or henna?” Margot wondered. 

“Never!” Mrs. Moncrieff protested angrily. 
“They’re above all that sort of thing!” 

“And besides you can’t get that shade with 
henna,” the Contessa added, “I’ve tried it.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


A DINNER OF CONSEQUENCE 

P ARDON, Madame, but why do you choose 
Gannert’s?” the Captain asked. 

The Contessa had wearied, somewhat, of the 
hospital-trays. ‘Might she have dinner sent in to¬ 
night, from a Restaurant?—Gannert’s, preferably. 
And—yes!—served on the Porch. There’d be light 
enough, the moon’s full—unless, of course, it’s 
against the rules.’ 

Miss Trenholm thought not—rather dubiously. 
She would have to consult Miss Beaux. 

“Quite so. And the Captain, perhaps, will attend 
to the rest?” 

“Delighted, Madame, but why do you select Gan¬ 
nert’s?” he repeated. 

“I’ve always heard,” she answered, “the cuisine 
there is excellent.” 

“It was, Madame, in the last century. Yes, 
twenty-five years ago one dined very well at Gan¬ 
nert’s. As well, almost, as at Delmonico’s, or Mr. 
Boldt’s ‘Bellevue,’ or the Cafe Vefour—or even 
Canfield’s in Saratoga. The aroma still clings, in 
the town’s imagination. We are loyal to our proud 

I8l 


i 82 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

traditions, stubbornly loyal. Gannert’s cuisine is 
one of them. In point of fact, Madame, what you 
get there now is no longer a dinner: it’s a super¬ 
stition.” 

If he might suggest- 

Certainly; wherever he thought best. The menu, 
also, she left to him; put herself in his hands, sans- 
reserve, for the evening. 

“And order service, please, for two. You’ll join 
me?”—she asked the nurse. 

“If you wish, of course, but—er—I—was intend¬ 
ing to see the eclipse tonight, with a friend. 

“By all means, my dear. Don’t miss that. They 
come around so seldom.” 

“Yes. He’s an interne at Bellevue, in New York. 
Rarely gets over here.” 

The confusion went unnoticed, the Contessa’s 
attention fixed elsewhere. 

“I say, Trenny, who is that interesting-looking 
man, over there?” 

“Which one?” 

“There’s only one, you Sly-puss. He’s always 
reading Wall Street papers.” 

The nurse told what little she knew of ‘the Grand 
Mogul.’ 

“How exciting!” the Contessa found the nick¬ 
name: “Is it his manner, or merely his-?” 

twiddling her fingers. 

“Very rich,” the other whispered; “lord of all 
he surveys, in his home county.” 




THE CONVALESCENTS 183 

“How romantic I”—said with a glance straight 
at Huggins, and spoken so he shouldn’t hear but 
could if he cared to. Then, a trifle louder: 

“Rather young, isn’t he?” 

Miss Trenholm didn’t know his age. 

“But it’s on the chart, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, but-” 

“Find out—that’s a dear—and tell me.” 

“Impossible I ’Gainst the rules.” 

“How perfectly silly! I’m sure anyone may know 
my age—on the chart. Just as if it mattered, if 
you don’t look it. And he certainly doesn’t. Come 
to think, I’ve never seen his wife call here.” 

“He hasn’t any: bachelor.” 

“And very rich, you said. What a chance for 
that pretty nurse of his!” 

Miss Trenholm took to her knitting, intensively. 

“You’ll ruin your eyes, my dear, in this dark 
corner. Can’t we And a sunnier place—some¬ 
where?” She nodded across the Porch, and finally 
manoeuvered her chair next to Mr. Huggins. 

Intrenched behind the newspaper, he made not to 
notice the approach; but his plan fell before her 
attack, novel and startling: 

“You’re looking worse today, Mr. Huggy.” 

“Huggins, Madame,” he corrected. “I’d like to 
return your compliment, but, unfortunately, you’re 
looking your best, as usual.” 

“That’s certainly very nice.” 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


184 

“No, it isn’t—it’s very disturbing.”—^And he 
buried his nose in The Financial Chronicle, 

“I’m sorry if I affect you that way, but, happily, 
I’m going away in a day or two.” 

“I hope so, Madame.” 

The Countess turned on him the eyes of a 
wounded fawn: 

“That isn^t very nice, Mr. Huggins.” 

“'Why not? You wouldn’t want to stay here for¬ 
ever, would you? God knows I want to get out of 
the place!” 

“O, but you mustn’t think of it, until you’re look¬ 
ing better. You wouldn’t want your friends to see 
you, this way. And when you leave here you should 
travel.” 

“I’m going to—straight home—where I can get 
some food. I s’pose you’re going back to Europe?” 

“Not ’mediately. I’ve taken a place on this side, 
for some months—to recuperate: just a bit of a 
box.” 

“With you in it, a jewel-box, you expect me to 
say I” 

“No one could possibly expect you to say anything 
so foolish!” Her wheeled-chair turned, threaten¬ 
ing flight, but- 

“Pardon, Madame, if that sounded rude.” 

“Shockingly so—after all the pleasant things I’ve 
been hearing of you, from the nurses and everybody. 
—Perhaps, though, I’m a trifle over-strung these 
days.” 



THE CONVALESCENTS 185 

“Yes, I understand you’ve lately had a serious 
misfortune.” 

“No, quite slight—the operation. Nothing to 
speak of.” 

The Mogul’s voice lowered, in sympathy: “I 
was referring. Countess, to your personal affairs.” 

“O—o—h?” Amazing—the volume of pleased 
surprise and gratitude for his interest she put into 
that one little word. 

“Widow, aren’t you?” 

“Worse than that,” through a ripple of laughter. 

“Impossible, Madame!” 

With disarming candour she confided her foreign 
entanglements, their quick disillusion and their final 
severance. “Now, isn’t that worse than merely 
widow?” 

“Not by a long shot—to my thinking!” 

“Apparently, you don’t believe in widows?” 

“I feel about widows same as I do about ghosts. 
I don’t believe in them, but I’m afraid of ’em.” 

The Countess smiled, incredulously. “You’d 
never make me believe that!—How are stocks be¬ 
having, these days?” and she nudged her chair a 
trifle closer as if to get a peek at the quotations. 

Huggins took no notice of the question nor her 
way of pointing it. Instead, he asked: 

“Where’s this—‘box’—you’ve taken? New¬ 
port?” 

“O, dear, man, I couldn’t afford that—the way 


186 THE CONVALESCENTS 

shares are acting and after all my dreadful bills here 
—and that perfectly wicked income tax.” 

Now, by ordinary, that should have set Mr. Hug¬ 
gins off. Her characterization of the hated impost 
promised a responsive audience—something usually 
denied him on the Porch. But here now was his 
soul’s twin—on one point at least. And, yet, he 
shirked the chance. Or else missed it utterly, his 
thoughts being elsewhere; on that chalet, appar¬ 
ently, where she planned retreat from worldly 
frivols. For he insisted on further detail. 

“Oh, it’ s something quite simple and primitive, a 
mere rustic hut; sort of thing you’d probably use 
for a gate-lodge or a garage. But will just suit me, 
the nurse says. I had her motor down there, to look 
it over. The dear girl needed a day’s outing— 
after all these weeks with my tantrums. The region 
is charming, she tells me—quite the prettiest in Jane 
Arundel County.” 

“Anne—not Jane!” 

“Thanks! You do seem to know everything. If, 
by any chance, you ever get down that way-” 

“I rarely get away from there, Madame: that’s 
my home—Anne Arundel.” 

A pair of blue eyes opened wide in wonder and 
delight, as a child’s might at sudden sight of a new 
toy. “Why”—the Contessa gasped—“what—an— 
amazing coincidence!—O, do, please, tell me all 
about the place—my neighbors and the climate— 
and everything. I know I’m going to be happy 



THE CONVALESCENTS 187 

there. I adore the country—especially with agree¬ 
able neighbors. I don’t suppose, though, my little 
place is anywhere near yours. The nurse says Nell 
Arundel is quite a roomy county.” 

The pace was a trifle swift for cautious Mr. Hug¬ 
gins, and trending unduly toward the personal. So 
he asked: 

“What sort of stocks have you?” 

“I don’t really know—except, of course, such 
things as Consols, and Rentes—and Rio-Tinto’s. 
My agent never tells me anything. It’s so hard to 
find anyone you can rely on, in such matters.” 

“Ever try a Trust Company?” 

“Oh, they’re such cold, impersonal things. And 
are they always quite reliable?” 

“Mine is—one I’m president of.” 

No mere ‘coincidence,’ this—an act of Provi¬ 
dence, and inviting, again, ocular strategy and the 
purr of dependence. Huggins may have been look¬ 
ing for it. But the Contessa was too much the 
artist to repeat an effect. 

Instead, she voiced disillusion: “ 0 -o-h— 
banker?—I’d never have taken you for—I saw, of 
course, from your literature, that you were inter¬ 
ested in finance, but I took you, rather, for—well— 
cotton—or horses—bridge-building or oil-wells— 
something of the big out-of-doors—the strenuous, 
delightful ruffian type that does things. That’s what 
I took you for!” 


i88 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

“Are you sure, Ma’am”—^his tone winked— 
“quite sure you didn’t take me for a fool?” 

“There!'—I knew you were the brutal kind!— 
And I was just wondering would you dine with me 
tonight—here, on the Porch. I’m having dinner 
sent in—and there’s a full moon.^’ 

“No good tonight, ma’am. There’s an eclipse, 
the papers say—total eclipse!” 

“Oh, thafs what’s doing it?—You know. I’ve 
been feeling’queer all day—and the nurse does, too 
—restless, nervous, jumpy, that don’t-know-what 
feeling. I blamed it on the monotonous menu, but 
it’s only the moon, you think?” 

No, he wouldn’t concede that he thought anything 
about It. 

“Then It hasn’t affected you?” 

“Nothing affects me, Madame, these days—not 
even stocks.” 

“Yes, but an eclipse Is such*a dear! And of all 
nights, tonight! Epatant! Something to remember 
always! Dinner in a hospital with—an eclipse. 
Why, It’s worth an operation! . . . And Isn’t it just 
wonderful, Mr. Huggums, how they do give you 
everything in this blessed place!” 

Henley called his hospital “half work-house and 
half-jail. Not this one! Here Is the plalsance of 
Romance, her pet covert when bored by familiar 
quarry. . . . She had flushed some strange birds in 


THE CONVALESCENTS 189 

this preserve, but none quite so unexpected as the 
pair she had just brought down. Romance looked 
the twain over, puzzled but delighted; made sure 
neither was shamming; tucked them away in her 
game bag—and called it a day. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


ON BREAD-PUDDING AND FREE 
EXPRESSION 

W HAT would you like for dessert today, sir? 
There’ll be bread-pudding on the trays.” 
“But that’s tomorrow—Tuesday!” the patient 
gasped. “Bread-pudding’s always Tuesday.” 

“Cook has shifted it to Mondays,” Miss Savile 
announced—“for the sake of variety.” 

“But Monday is prune’s day!” 

“Cook has switched prunes to Thursday—for 
further variety.” 

Cartell’s mind, inert from idleness, couldn’t quite 
grasp it: 

“Thursday’s devoted to Brown-Betty—prac¬ 
tically married. They’ve been inseparable since 
I’ve been here. Now to let prunes come between 
them like a—home-breaker! What’s to become of 
her?” 

“Goes over to Saturday—cook says—for addi¬ 
tional variety.” 

“‘Variety’? It’s revolution! It might possibly 
work out with prunes, or even tapioca-Friday; but 
when cook tries turning bread-pudding into a sort 

190 


THE CONVALESCENTS 191 

of Movable-Feast—as though it were a mere dainty 
instead of a hieratic institution-” 

“Of course, sir, if you don’t care for the bread¬ 
pudding today——” 

“O, I don’t mind,” Cartell interrupted with 
affected indifference. 

“Of course not! And you wouldn’t say so if you 
did mind. Please, sir, don’t be so patient and con¬ 
siderate and resigned. ’Tisn’t fair to the nurse. 
Doesn’t give her a decent chance to develop the 
qualities she’ll need most. One learns a lot more 
from a case that is exacting, peevish and grouchy.— 
Don’t you ever swear, sir?” 

“On Tuesdays—always. But, now, with the shift 
to the Monday menu-” 

“No, sir!” she threatened. “You’ve had your 
last bread-pudding in this place!” 

“I’ve dreamed of this moment. Miss Savile.” 

“You should have told me so before.” 

“I respect too much the ancient traditions of the 
institution.” 

“You shouldn’t, sir, respect anything except your 
own impulse. All the best thought of the day is 
for free expression. No inhibitions. Helps a case 
a lot. Do, please, have what you like—do as you 
like—say what you like.—Think you’d like a Float¬ 
ing-Island?” 

“I don’t mind. What is it?” 

“Wait and see, sir. I’m supposed to be rather 
good on ‘Floating-Island.’ ” 






192 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Delmonlco the First, Brillat-Savarin, Vatel—any 
cordon-bleu—could have learned something that day 
in the diet-kitchen. There are possibilities in 
whipped-cream, beaten-eggs, sifted flour, flaming 
sugar, vanilla, chocolate, grenadine, almond-paste, 
never dreamed of in their philosophy of sweets and 
kickshaws. 

Miss Savile’s patient was not the only one, appar¬ 
ently, to sniff indifference to bread-pudding; and the 
nurses sympathizing, were on their mettle. They 
didn’t simply cook; they mixed in daring, imagina¬ 
tion, invention, poetry. For the occasion, they were 
as great artists—taking bold chances in composition, 
not only with ingredients but with indigestion. Yet 
no patient suffered set-back. x 4 udacity won as usual 

and for the best of reasons, as you shall see. 

Miss Beauclerc offered a sensation—“Coupe- 
Sans-Souci. She didn’t claim it for her own; she’d 
had it, a few nights before, at a dinner-party and 
secured the recipe in writing from the secretive chef, 
on promise that it should be used only for the hos¬ 
pital. The precious slip was read aloud. 

“Attractive,” Miss Killarney agreed; “but ac¬ 
cording to that recipe your Souci ‘takes a lot of 
sherry,’ to pronounce the flavor,—doesn’t it?” 

“Depends on how you pronounce the ‘Souci’;_ 

‘oo’ as in ‘boo,’ my dear, not ‘ow’ as in ‘ouch’I” 

‘‘Any way you say it, you have no sherry.—My 
patient thinks he’d like a Lillian-Russell.” 

“He must be fully convalescent,” the Bishop’s 


THE CONVALESCENTS 193 

daughter observed. “They always ask the impos¬ 
sible.” 

“O, I could make it easy enough, only we don’t 
have any cantaloupe.” 

“I could make a rum-omelet,” Miss Morell dis¬ 
covered, “only we do have the Volstead Act.” 

“Don’t bother with the ‘Lillian,’ ” Miss Tren- 
holm suggested. “Give him a Peach-Melba 
instead.” 

“Or a Lalla-Rookh.” 

“Or a Charlotte-Russe. That’s what I’m mak¬ 
ing.” Miss Morell held up to view a tall confection 
of Byzantine design. 

“What! That wedding-breakfast? You’d never 
get by the State-Board with all that for one 
Charlotte-Russe I” 

“It is though—Charlotte-Russe a la Kerensky. 
See how you like it.” 

Miss Gwinett munched one of the petit-fours, a 
macaroon and two spoonfuls of the whip. 

“Charlotte’s very nice,” she decided, “but her 
Russian friend is sort of—off-sky. Don’t you think 
so, Trenny?” 

Miss Trenholm was in a quandary of her own. 
Her patient, the Contessa, was exigeante in the 
matter of desserts— tout-a-fait difficile^ she herself 
admitted. ‘Bread-pudding was nothing in her young 
life.’ 

Today she rather thought she’d like—let’s see— 
yes, Angel-food!—but no—after a glance at a silk- 


194 the convalescents 

covered hamper of bon-bons—an Inspiration— 
Cherubs’-Dimples I Did Trenny know how to—^but, 
no, of course not; they were quite new even to Paris: 
the latest fantalsie In patisserie. But she could give 
a very accurate idea to work on; something between 
Gateau-St. Honore and Meringue-Panachee, or, 
possibly, Franglpanl-a-l’Aphrodlte. 

Even with this Information and a large dish 
of crystallized-frults, sugared-rose-leaves, French 
nougat, Turkish paste and candled violets culled 
from the box of bon-bons. Miss Trenholm still had 
her doubts. 

“Does this taste quite right?” she asked the com¬ 
pany. 

Miss Winston took a spoonful and, still uncer¬ 
tain, a second: “Trifle too much Sozodont,” she 
suggested, “but you try It,” and handed the dish to 
Miss De Lancey who, In turn, begged Miss Savlle 
to taste her prune-soufflee. 

“It looks most attractive!” 

Miss Dalkeith objected: 

“Nothing with prunes Is ever attractive. A 
prune’s the next thing to man that can’t dance.” 

“Wait ’till you see how I do these.” 

“Only way to do a prune,” Miss Dalkeith in¬ 
sisted, “Is to cremate It, and then drown the re¬ 
mains.” 

“What’s all that, Sandra?” 

“Floating Island, of course.” 

“‘Island!’—^Why, child, you’ve got it beat into 


THE CONVALESCENTS 195 

an archipelago”—and having made free of the 
saffron sea and two or three fluffy islets, she passed 
it along to Miss Beauclerc who meanwhile had been 
reconciling Coupe-San-Souci to vanilla-extract in¬ 
stead of sherry, and now proudly submitted the 
product for judgment. 

Miss Winthrop smacked approving lips: 
“Couldn’t be better with sherry!” and passed the 
coupe to Miss Creighton who, disagreeing, thought 
it needed a soupcon of—of—then another swallow 
— something^ and handed it on to the next juror 
who took half of what was left and thrust the re¬ 
mainder to Miss Conde. 

The Bishop’s daughter took no notice. Gazed 
abstractedly at the ceiling, her lips moving silently, 
her spoon stirring lackadaisically—until some one 
glancing into the dish exclaimed: 

“O, look who’s here—old Brown Betty!” 

“Ti-tum-tiddy—Ti-tiddy-tum”—instantly echoed 
Miss Conde—^beating ti-tum-tiddy and ti-tiddy-tum 
on the edge of the dish; put it aside; with a running 
jump perched herself on the window-sill and began 
scribbling wildly, reading aloud as the pencil scur¬ 
ried from line to line:— 

Call the doctors—up and down! 

Betty Brown’s in town. 

Knives and saws and scissors jingle— 

Sets the internes all a-tingle!— 

Betty’s young and sweet and single. 


196 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

Cut her gently—save the pieces— 

Betty’s pa is rich as Croesus. 

Purr how needless her affright is— 

Looks like mumps or tonsilitis 
May be, only ’pendicitis. 

Whatever’s wrong, they soon will mend—fix— 
Tummy—tonsils—teeth—appendix. 

Warn ’em: Mustn’t let her feaze y’e 
She’s a case to josh and tease y’e. 

Give her plenty anaesthesia. 

Keep her there—take no chances 
Awake, she’ll put you all in trances. 

Down-of-eider, lace and roses 
Be the couch her form encloses— 

Like whereon Queen Mah reposes. 

Gatch’s-bed may do for bumpkins, 

Betty’s folks are social pumpkins. 

By this time the Floating-Island had finished its 
voyage, after having put in at many harbors, and 
giving toll at every port-of-call. Miss Morell—the 
last of these—released the empty craft to the owner. 

“Lacks something, Sandra, but I don’t think 
that’ll hurt him.” 

“I’m sure it won’t—seeing what’s left of it—a 
speck of the island, with nothing to float on.—And 
there’s the bell—the trays are up I” 

They filed sedately, though in panic haste, to the 
dumb-waiter, leaving Miss Morell to destroy the 
evidence of their dissipation. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 197 

“If Miss Beaux finds out”—they warned her— 
“after all those eggs and cream and sugar—we’ll all 
get bally-hoo.” 

“And meanwhile,” Miss Morell called after, “the 
patients get bread-pudding.” 

At sight of the dessert, Cartell placed two fingers 
on his left wrist. 

“Stop that, sir!” Miss Savile cried: “You know 
you can’t take your own pulse.” 

“I can when I look at bread-pudding.” 

“ ’Tisn’t meant to ‘look at,’ sir, nor to measure 
pulse; but to eatP^ Tartness, quite new for her, 
spiced the-speech. “And it’s supposed to be rather 
sedative.” 

“Ah! That’s where it deceives you. Miss Savile. 
Beneath that mild, listless exterior, there’s some¬ 
thing madly exciting about bread-pudding; slow but 
cumulative, acervatingly cumulative. And that’s 
been going on, now, seven weeks. Nearly two 
months of bread-pudding! After that, a frog could 
take his own pulse.” 

Her only protest was to recite: 

“Bread-pudding is abundantly rich in calories, 
especially with a modicum of raisins—like that one. 
Dietitians all mention it—warmly.” 

“It deserves it—very warmly,” he agreed with 
fervor. “But they approach the Pudding solely 
from a corporeal angle. They overlook the psy¬ 
chology of the stuff—^the complex of the mushy mess 


198 THE CONVALESCENTS 

—made all the more dubious by that masquerade of 
Muscatels. And flagrantly so when the patient’s 
fancy has been set a-roaming on a Floating Island.” 

Miss Savlle looked quite miserable. 

“I don’t mind, of course,” he hurried on, “and I 

wouldn’t speak of It, only you insist on ‘free expres- 
» »» 

sion. 

“I am sorry, sir, but something happened to the 
Floating Island.” 

“Earth-quake or typhoon?” 

“More like a famine, sir. I foolishly sent it on a 
Cook’s Tour—In the diet-kitchen—and they ate it 
off the map.” 

“Must have been attractive”—glaring, still more 
recusant, at the soggy Interloper. 

“Now please don’t make me send that down, in¬ 
tact. Cook will feel dreadfully hurt. If you won’t 
eat it ril have to, myself, and I’ve had a very trying 
morning. Somehow, everything goes wrong to¬ 
day.” 

He couldn’t help but enjoy her distress for a 
moment. She was exquisitely pretty so; her eyes 
blinking, dewy under the frown, her thin, cool lips 
yielding, with a flush, to the pout. 

Ineptly, though intending kindly, he said: “Miss 
Newlands wouldn’t take it so tragically—the Pud¬ 
ding.” 

“Miss Newlands is a graduate-nurse. They can 
do as they jolly well like. Send down the whole 
tray untouched and unexplained to cooks, patients 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


199 

or phys—puddings. And I rather think if Miss 
Newlands were here now in my place, you would 
eat that.” 

He sighed compliance and reached for the dish, 
to start his meal. 

“But that’s your dessert, sir!” 

“Today we’ll have it hors-d’oeuvre.” 

“What for?” 

“Variety!” he growled. “Cook can’t object to 
that!” 

She eyed him anxiously. 

“This is a new mood for you, sir. What does 
it mean?” 

“Additional variety.” 

Morosely, but scrupulously, he disassociated the 
raisins from the rest; arranged them, taking care 
and time, in a circle about the edge. Then, suddenly 
brightening: 

“Miss Savile—there’s the makings here of a 
noble poultice!” 

“Do you feel the need of a poultice—anywhere?” 

“Yes! Anywhere —except internally.” 

Disdaining the challenge, she gave the pudding 
the air, seriously, on the outer window-sill. Where¬ 
at, or in trice thereof, arose a clamor of peeps, 
cheeps, chirps and twitters; a ruffle, whirr and 
flutter; scores of sparrows, all fuss-and-feathers, 
flew self-invited to the feast; hovered over—around 
—about. But for some reason held off, suspicious, 
sniffy, fearful. Ogled the duke at every angle, 


200 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


flicked it with wing and tail, pecked and dabbed at 
it—^but instantly recoiling, as if from electric shock, 
after the tiniest possible bill-touch. And always a 
babel of opinions, comparisons, arguments, warn¬ 
ings. 

Now the pudding was not of the nurse’s making 
nor election. Yet for the birds thus to twit it, 
figuratively turning up their noses and actually their 
tails, hurt her to the quick. Such was their pride 
of the Hospital: so sensitive of anything that 
touched its greatness from clinic to kitchen. 

Her slight figure, interposed at the window, failed 
to hide the raree-show. With a whispered Scat I 
and a hand-wave she shooed the sparrows off—but 
no farther than the balustrade. There, droop-eyed, 
owl-like, they lined up in silent assize—excepting 
only one particularly obstreperous cock-sparrow. 
He stood to his post and the pudding; took a beak¬ 
ful, with air a routrance! —gulped—gagged—spat 
it out—^^tilted contemptuous tail skyward and fled 
the scene, the flock following. 

“Silly fool—the birds, I mean, sir. Did you see 
their insulting capers?—What do you suppose got 
into them?” 

“Well, for one thing,” he gloated, “no bread- 
pudding!” 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE UNSUSPECTED POTENCY OF MRS. 
HUGGINS’ UKULELE 

A S the days went on Room 54 became a storm- 
centre. The gettlng-out of Mr. Huggins 
ceased to be a breezy jest: it took on the import of 
a major-operation. Kreweson, the house-physician, 
discussed it with his associates over the midnight 
supper. Miss Beaux, the superintendent—a pillar 
of patience by temperament: a symbol of serenity 
by training—betrayed nerves. The Captain fore¬ 
saw relief only in a writ-of-evictlon and constable. 
The nurses’-bench whispered the possibilities of a 
boycott. The diet-kitchen buzzed with plans of a 
food-blockade. In scores of ways he came to know 
that his room was needed, sorely needed, for cases 
that couldn’t wait. But Huggins stayed on. 

Thereby the theory of thought-waves got a jolt 
and set-back. They swirled and raged about his 
door like a Kansas cyclone; but Huggins sat tight, 
unmoved, even to the batting of an eye-lash. If 
conscious of the storm, he gave no sign, except to eat 

more chops and drink more orange-juice. 

201 


202 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


Apparently, the man was without feeling of any 
sort. Harley, the dressing-surgeon, had remarked 
it from the first, with amaze and amusement. A 
probe, that even under Harley’s light and lenient 
hand struck most patients with the force of a deep- 
sea dredger, merely tickled Huggins; a clamp of 
fiendish efficiency—“Big Kelly”—a cruel-only-to-be- 
kind device that most patients winced to look-upon 
—Huggins minded no more than the finish-file of 
the manicure. When the dressing-wagon rumbled 
out, even strong men asked only drawn-curtains and 
sleep. Huggins asked for orange-juice and The 
Financial Chronicle, 

Today he was to get the Hospital’s ultimatum. 
Dr. Kreweson sought to soften the decree by thump¬ 
ing the patient, resoundingly, at vital points of the 
body; by compliments on his appetite, color, vigor, 
bubbling spirits, general condition—^— 

Bah! They couldn’t tell him his condition! 
‘Operating on mighty small margin.’ He knew 
what the end would be. He was resigned to close 
the account—since the Lord willed it—but, damn-it, 
he wouldn’t be pushed! 

“Now that you’ve had your fun out of the opera¬ 
tion, seems you’ve lost all interest in the case.” 

“Nonsense, Mr. Huggins.” 

“Looks to me. Doctor, as though you didn’t want 
me to die in the house.” 

“You do just as you please about that, sir—go or 



THE CONVALESCENTS 203 

stay as long as you like. But you are looking the 
picture of health, sir,” Kreweson complained. 

“You think so, eh? Well, I’ll tell you how I look: 
I wired my broker yesterday to sell my stocks at the 
market, and now I’ve sent for my pastor. I guess 
you know what that means!” 

Doctor Kreweson, boiling within, remained chilly. 
He didn’t warm even when Huggins intimated that 
he meant to do something for the Hospital: kind 
o’ felt that his last days were passing here—that the 
end was nearer than the doctors knew—that the 
only thing that kept him going was the orange- 
juice.—Yes, he would like a glass right now!—and 
when it was all over the Board-of-Directors would 
thank the nurse for urging him to remain to the 
finish. 

Miss Conde withered under the lightning glance 
of the superintendent; but, of course, she couldn’t 
contradict the patient—under Rule III of the 
Nurse’s Primer. 

“Where can I go, if I leave here,” he demanded, 
“in my condition?” 

He’d do very well, they told him, at the Seven- 
oaks Tavern—in the pine-woods just beyond the 
Park. “You can see it from the Porch, on a clear 
day. Many of our patients go there to convalesce.” 

“But—that’s where people go to dance!” He 
looked to Miss Conde for corroboration. 

“You won’t have to dance, sir,” she stammered. 


204 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

“But I’ll have to see others doing it,” he coun¬ 
tered—“and in my condition!” 

“Well, then—^Atlantic City,” the doctor ordered 
desperately. 

“ ‘Atlantic City?’ ” he bellowed. “You’d send 
me to that robbers’-roost—to—to—starve to 
death ?” 

“You’ll find plenty there to eat—all kinds of 
places.” 

“No, sir—only two kinds of places! In one you 
get ‘stung’—and in the other indigestion. I’ll leave 
it to you, nurse?” 

Miss Conde ventured, evasively, that she had 
heard the sea-food commended. 

“Quite so,” he agreed—“that’s their long suit— 
sea-food'—and pastry. And that’s ’bout all the 
restaurants care to serve—tarts and lobsters. No, 
thank you—not in my condition!” 

Beaten again, the house-physician, followed by 
the superintendent, withdrew to the hall. 

Presently, the pastor arrived: a man of rosy-gills, 
twinkling eyes, and full, round paunch; in rusty 
Prince-Albert; shoes well-polished but broken, 
shabby; collar spotless but frayed. From all of 
which one might fairly guess a rural parish, and his 
tithe paid in kind instead of coin. 

He introduced himself with a chuckle: “Michael 
Huggins,”—and, still chuckling, his wife—“natu¬ 
rally enough, Mrs. Huggins.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 205 

A little, bird-like woman; decidedly sparrowy, in 
her brown taffeta; a voice that peeped and chirped 
and yet challenged: a general port of up-and-at-’em 
—not peevish, nor fractious, nor naggy, but 
frankly belligerent, in arms against the world, the 
flesh and the devil—of which, she felt in her 
woman’s-heart, she and her husband had not gotten 
their fair share. All in all, an extremely rare speci¬ 
men of the clerg}^man’s wife'—in fiction: but in 
actual fact, no dodo-bird. 

She held, anxiously, a cash-and-carry bag of green 
chintz; half as long as herself; might hide a leg-of- 
mutton. Instead, it hid a box-of-tricks fateful as 
Pandora’s. 

Doctor Kreweson was quick to tell them that they 
would find the patient greatly improved—perfectly 
well, indeed—so that he really ought to be out of 
the Hospital, long ago,—and they must so advise 
their brother. 

“Not my brother,” the lady twittered: “no blood- 
kin of mine at all—though we all love Abner. He’s 
my husband’s brother. But they’re as different— 
he and Mike—as clams and crullers—not meaning 
to reflect in any way on clams,” she chirped, kindly: 
“ ’cause we all love Abner.—Better go to him, 
Mike.” 

Alone with the pastor’s wife. Miss Beaux begged 
her to urge Mr. Huggins’ departure; he was in 
danger of melancholia here, from brooding over 


206 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


his case. . . . “For instance, he keeps a precise 
record, the nurse tells us, of everything he eats.” 

“And drinks,” Mrs. Michael added. “He showed 
my husband the account last time he called here. 
Also bills-of-fare from three or four of the fashion¬ 
able hotels and restaurants.” 

“Yes, he had the nurse fetch them; said they 
might help his appetite. 

“And they do help—when he compares what he’d 
have to pay restaurants for what he gets here. He’s 
put it all down in that precise record of his diet, 
every item of every meal. ‘Celery 50 cents; 
chicken-broth 45 cents; two chops 90 cents; 
mashed potatoes 35 cents; hearts-o’-lettuce 50 
cents; ice-cream 35 cents.’ And as for the orange- 
juice—he showed Michael whole pages of his 
account-book—made out of the Hospital’s letter- 
paper, you’ll find—covered with ditto-dots and 
x’s, and he’s figured-out by algebra that at the res¬ 
taurants—or even soda-fountains—his orange-juice 
alone would cost him as much per day as his room- 
rent here. And in those places, Abner’s figured, he 
couldn’t be sure it was the real thing, like he gets 
here, or more likely some of that patent ‘orange- 
crush’ stuff that’s advertised in the magazines. 

“O, but he’s made up for it, he says, in his will. 
And you-all here will be astonished when you find 
what he’s done for the Hospital. Abner’s careful 
of his money, but when it comes to charity and help¬ 
ing folks, he goes the limit. You’ll probably find 


THE CONVALESCENTS 207 

that he’s bequeathed you as much as a dozen oranges 
and, maybe, one of those glass juice-squeezers from 
the lo-cent store. 

“When it comes to doing good with his millions, 
Abner thinks no more of giving a nickel than most 
folks would of five cents. When our church is in 
dire need of a subscription my husband will never 
let his brother head the list; he’s afraid Abner’s 
example will lead the rest of the parish into reck¬ 
lessness. We all love Abner, but the only way to 
get his room—that you all need so badly—is to 
double his rent, same as he’s done with his tenants. 
Or cut down his oats—and charge him war-tax on 
the orange-juice—same as the soda-fountains. The 
shock might give him a fatal relapse: but you’d have 
him out of here, one way or another. Meanwhile, 
I’ll try to brighten him up.” 

Something in her swing of the chintz-bag 
prompted Miss Beaux to observe that Mr. Huggins, 
in certain regards, had been most considerate; 
wouldn’t have a graduate nurse, knowing they were 
particularly scarce at present and some patient 
might need her more than he did; said he’d worry 
along with the student-nurses. 

“Yes, that’s like Abner! He’d give up his seat 
in Heaven, if it cost any more than standing-room.” 

By now the sparrow-complex had ceased to 
twitter. This last shot fairly crackled with temper. 
In her meeting with Abner, ‘in his condition,’ Miss 


208 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Beaux sensed a clash and sought to Interpose some 
gentling thought. 

“Mr. Huggins, perhaps, is merely eccentric 
rather than careful,” she offered desperately: “We 
are told, for Instance, he was one of the first and 
largest contributors to the Prohibition Fund.” 

“Quite so!” The assent was ominously eager. 
“And the day before that he bought a controlling 
interest in the hardest soft-drink on the market— 
mostly dope, Michael warns his Sunday-school. 
And the day after Prohibition took effect, the ‘pop¬ 
ular’ chain-cafes of which Abner Is a large and be¬ 
loved stock-holder raised their cup of coffee from 
five cents to ten—^whereby Abner marched several 
parasangs toward getting back his donation.” 

Miss Beaux let her go. 


As Huggins wheeled on to the Porch, followed by 
his pastor, some one started, cheerily, the customary 
—“You’re look-” 

“Yes, yes,” he assented, “and that’s how I feel— 
like Billy-be-damnedI And I look it, too!—So do 
some other people I could mention, only It’s ’gainst 
the rules here.” Mr. Huggins always conformed to 
the code of the Club, but construed It peculiarly. 

After that outbreak he took what spiritual com¬ 
fort he could from his chuckling brother and then 
dispatched him on several errands for which he 
would ordinarily have to pay messenger-service. 



THE CONVALESCENTS 209 

And Michael chuckled at the thought that was why 
Abner had sent for him. His wife had said several 
times during the journey to town that they’d find 
it was something like that! 

From the screen of the Chronicle^ the Mogul 
scanned the Porch long and anxiously. Then to his 
nurse: 

“Is the Countess feeling worse, today?” 

Miss Conde couldn’t say. 

“But—she’s always been out here about this 
time?” 

After studying her wrist watch intently, Miss 
Conde ventured: 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Hadn’t you better go ask her nurse if-” 

“Miss Trenholm is away on leave, sir.” 

“Then who’s looking after the lady?” 

Miss Conde didn’t know. 

This man was familiar with secretiveness. He 
was an “inside” director of several corporations that 
never told their stockholders anything except where 
to send their proxies and assessments. But com¬ 
pared to these tight-lipped nurses the Rockefellers, 
Morgans and Garys of his experience were magpies 
of dicacity. 

Hitherto the Mogul had been callous to Miss 
Conde’s reserve; now it rasped him to the raw: 
“Please go and ask the Countess how she’s feeling 
—for me, say.” 

The nurse shook her head regretfully but firmly. 



210 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“We are not permitted, sir, to discuss such per¬ 
sonal matters with patients. And, besides,”— 
just as though it didn’t matter—“the Countess 
Bianchi has left the Hospital.” 

A long, deep breath beat the rustle of his trembly 
newspaper. 

“Not gone for good?” he barked. 

“We all hope so. She’s so terribly attractive.— 
But wouldn’t you like some orange-juice?” 

“No!” For the first time he realized the tame¬ 
ness of such liquor in a real emergency. . . . Gone 1 
and he, too, with an indescribable sinking feeling, a 
panic of emptiness that he could liken only to that 
awful day of the “corner” in Stutz Motor and he 
“short” a thousand shares. 

The possibility of such a disaster as love falling 
upon him had always seemed as remote as a—a— 
well, as a dividend on his Wabash Common. In 
all his years of flush health, he had kept out of that 
market, shy even of the Kerb—and now, in his con¬ 
dition, ’way below par, just out of the hands of the 
Great Receiver'—now, when by all the rules of the 
game he should be immune. 

He knew when he came here that an operation, 
any operation, even the waggish appendix, is always 
a bit chancy. Mrs. “Mike,” the clergyman’s wife, 
had cited several cases within her personal knowl¬ 
edge that had actually walked off the table unas¬ 
sisted after just such an operation as his and then 
succumbed to “shock” or “complications” or “heart 



211 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

failure’^; and of course every joemiller of his ac¬ 
quaintance had told him to ‘look out for those pretty 
nurses.’ But no one had warned him against this 
sort of thing. 

After a time he managed to inquire : 

“When’d she go?” 

Miss Conde couldn’t say. 

“But—somebody must know.” 

No comment. 

“But how could she go so—suddenly?” 

“Must have been discharged, sir.” 

“‘Discharged!’” The word in this technical 
sense was new to Huggins and baffled him. “You 
don’t mean to say she was—discharged?” 

“Why, of course, sir,” she said, quite gayly as if 
it were something of a joke. Which Huggins 
thought peculiarly heartless in a Bishop’s daughter 
and in his condition. 

Huggins related all human affairs to finance. So 
his first thought of the lady’s abrupt departure— 
‘discharged I’—he had snarled it often at employees 
but never till now sensed its ferocity—flew to that 
for cause. She had mentioned, delicately, her un¬ 
ruly stocks, shrinking bonds, her two foreign hus¬ 
bands and her enforced retreat to the country. All 
of which hinted to Huggins a bad Bank-Statement 
for the dear creature, and tight money. 

He yearned to question Miss Conde: ‘Had there 
been any trouble about meeting her assessments 
here?’'—meaning, of course, her weekly bills. But 


212 THE CONVALESCENTS 

he dreaded the answer: ‘Really couldn’t say, sir,’ 
in a clear undertone of ‘wouldn’t if I could.’ 

Then a sudden sense of part-guilt in the ugly 
business impelled him to ask meekly : 

“Anything to do with the dinner?” 

As to that Miss Conde would only generalize: 
“Miss Trenholm never allows her patients any in¬ 
discretions.” 

Huggins resented the insinuation. “The Countess 
doesn’t need any such looking after,” he retorted 
gallantly; but he thought possibly the authorities 
had found fault with the dinner brought from out¬ 
side—and the porch—and the moon and—so on. 

From the nurse’s silence and stare of vacuity 
there might be no such thing in Nature as a dinner, 
a porch, or even a moon. 

Huggins plunged into a study of the stock-list and 
emerged with an idea. “The Countess had con¬ 
sulted me about her investments. I must get in 

touch with her at once, I see-” tapping the 

Chronicle. “You will please ask the office where 
she’s gone.” 

It s against the rules, sir, to make such inquiries 
about another nurse’s patient.” 

“Bah! More rules here than the Dutch Stock 
Exchange I” 


In that temper he greeted his sister-in-law— 
curtly, frappishly; but mellowed at sight of the 
chintz-bag. 



THE CONVALESCENTS 213 

“Have you brought me some food?” he asked. 

She smiled adnuently: “The choicest I could 
think of, Abner.” She drew it out, opened it at the 
book-mark, and in confidential tone began Gray’s 
“Elegy in a Country Church-Yard.” The other 
patients elaborately disregarded what was appar¬ 
ently a family-affair, until the reader’s voice rising 
with the tide of the poet’s emotions demanded 
notice from the entire Porch personally and col¬ 
lectively, that “the paths of Glory lead but to the 
Grave.” 

Mrs. Michael bowed her thanks for the stunning 
silence that applauded her recital—^and reached in. 
the bag for the encore. 

“Some of you may have heard this, but I’m sure 
dear Abner hasn’t. I think it’s kind o’ purty.” And 
she read them Alan Seegar’s exquisite ‘Rendezvous 
with Death’: read it with obvious effect, visible and 
audible. 

The Veiled Lady turned her back to the reader, 
pulled up the silken coverlet to her shoulders, drew 
her kimono collar up to her ears, buried her head 
in the pillow and yielded frankly to her emotion; 
silently, but every sob betrayed by the palpitating 
kimono, and each sob growing in violence until the 
roll-chair threatened to slip its moorings. 

Appreciation could go no farther. And Mrs. 
Michael, exultant, reached in the chintz bag for her 
trump-card, saying “at home we use the concertina 
for this song; but it’s kind of unhandy to carry; I 


214 the convalescents 

guess you-all can get the chord from this.” And she 
twanged the ukulele. 

At the familiar tinkle, the Veiled Lady emerged 
from shelter only to disappear when—boom!— 
Mrs. “Mike” began “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” 

She sang—in stunning contrast with her speaking 
pipes—a barytone of deepest purple; no profound 
contralto; but honest, forth-right barytone—of the 
timbre that Cartell hadn’t heard—nor anyone else 
'—since May Yohe used to thunder: 

You do not love me — no! 

Kiss me good-bye and go! 

with such sombre thrill, such direct personal appeal, 
seemingly, to every man in the audience, that you 
were tempted to stand up, coram publico, and pro¬ 
test: ‘No, no—^you’re wrong!—Take back those 
cruel words.’ So that it was a real kindness to her 
myriad admirers when Miss Yohe finally exchanged 
the cheers of the gallery for the coronet of the New- 
castles. 

That was the timbre of Mrs. Huggins I 

There was no denying the appeal of her perform¬ 
ance, and slight resisting. One patient after the 
other hid his sobs in a verse of the matchless threne. 
Even Cartell and Varrey and Skethway, the jockey, 
who confided later to his nurse that he couldn’t sing 
for sour apples.—But it was submerged in the rich 
diapason that swept the Porch under the spell of 
Mrs. “Mike.” 

And when she’d got the ukulele going full-tilt, 


THE CONVALESCENTS 215 

plunked and plectroned into quavering vibrance, you 
had the contrapuntal effect of a ’cello duet by Hans 
Kindler and Pablo Casals, with an obligato by the 
Six Brown Brothers on their saxophones. 

Down the corridor came the hurried tap-tap-tap 
of rubber-soles and the swish of starched skirts. 
The half-score nurses slowed at the door, ap¬ 
proached their respective patients without the 
faintest show of excitement—and shoved a ther¬ 
mometer into their respective mouths, with the usual 
injunction to shut their respective lips. Then fol¬ 
lowed forthwith a swift trundling of Gatch-beds 
and roll-chairs from the verandah back to the 
rooms. 

“We stood for old Mr. Gray’s Elegy in the 
Church-yard and for her purty ‘Rendezvous with 
Death,’ ” Miss Savile explained to her patient, “but 
when she began ‘Nearer, my God’—well—you-all 
out there have been near enough lately, without her 
shoving you any further with a heathen zing-zing. 
I’m not particularly pious—not half as much as I 
ought to be—and I hope I’m not finicky, but that 
is not the sort of hymn that goes with a ukulele!” 

Mrs. Huggins, alone with her husband’s brother, 
went straight on, never raising her eyes from the 
ukulele nor lowering a note of her saxophonic 
voice; not even when a dreadful clangor echoing 
through the halls, louder and more insistent than 
the emergency-call in the silence of the night, 
brought Miss Conde on a run. 


2i6 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

“Please, Mr. Huggins, pleaseP^ the nurse en¬ 
treated, taking the bell from him. “The patients 
will think it’s a fire.” 

“There’ll be an earth-quake, if this happens 
again.” 

“It won’t, Mr. Huggins, never again, while 
you’re here,” the nurse assured him. 

“No! Not while I’m here! ’Cause I’m leaving 
now —soon as I get packed up—” 

But this is most irregular, sir. You must wait 
for Dr. Kreweson—and he’ll ‘discharge’ you prop¬ 
erly.” 

“He needn’t trouble to ‘discharge’ me, tell him: 
I’ve resigned.” 

And he jumped from his wheel-chair, strode 
toward his room, calling back: “Have ’em make out 
my bill—to date I” 

He had it within twenty minutes; paid it at the 
office—and was told the taxi was waiting for him. 

“ ‘Taxi’?” he roared, “What for?” 

“To take you to the railroad station.” 

What s the idea ? Don’t the street-cars go to 
the depot any more ? Or maybe there’s a strike, eh ? 
—If I’m well enough to leave here—as you all say 
—I guess I’m strong enough to use the street-car. 
Or I should be strong enough, if I had a little 
orange-juice.” 

While he drank it, with frowns and puckers as 
though it were a bitter dose, the ambulance-surgeon 


THE CONVALESCENTS 217 

came In for final instructions regarding a case he was 
to fetch from the railroad-station. 

“The patient arrives at three-o’clock,” Miss 
Beaux announced, “on the train from New York.” 

“That’s my train to the South,” Huggins inter¬ 
posed; “leaves three-ten. I’ll ride to the depot with 
you.” 

Against the rules, they objected. 

“Rules, nonsense! I’ll pay for it. The Hos¬ 
pital might as well get the seven cents as the traction- 
company.” 

Without more ado he stamped out of the door, 
threw his kit-bag aboard, and climbed in. 

Thus the Grand Mogul did for himself, thriftily, 
on his triumphal journey back to Anne Arundel. 

On arrival there he learned, to his stupefaction, 
that the estate adjoining his own had been taken for 
the Summer by an Eyetalian Princess from Mus¬ 
kogee. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE SWAN-SONG OF “BIG KELLY”: 
ACCOMPANIST, DOCTOR HARLEY 

G ive me the man,” cries the sage, “who sings 
at his work.” ^ 

Harley, the dressing-surgeon, was of that quality. 
Usually, of course, his song was sotto-voce; fre¬ 
quently, a mere hum or a whispered whistle or a 
confidential deedle-dum-deedle-dum. But always 
he tempered the terrors of his ministrations with 
some pretty tune. 

For a period of his youth, it seems, he inclined 
to grand-opera; studied for it.—There were times 
when Cartell wished he’d gone through with it.— 
His mind still moved in melody, and in his obedient 
hand clamp, probe and drain answered the musical 
impulse. Even the adhesive tautened to a “Yeo, 
heave, ho!” Scultetis tightened to a pirate’s 
chantey. 

It got into the dressing-wagon—this musical com¬ 
plex of Harley’s; made sounding brass and tinkling 
cymbals, or deep-tolling chimes, of the knives and 

* Never sang at his own work! Croaked, roared, and bellowed. 

218 


THE CONVALESCENTS 219 

scissors, tubes, pans and bottles and all the para¬ 
phernalia of pain. 

At times the dread machine came rolling to the 
door with the rumble of the tumbril in the Reign of 
Terror. And the surgeon, choosing the probe, 
would most likely chirp “A Hundred Fathoms 
(Deep.” Again, it struck a livelier note In Harley 
—some merry arietta of musical-comedy or, at the 
worst, the Toreador’s song. Today It came a- 
frolic: steel and crystal all a-tinkle and a-jingle in 
a wild fantasia of triumph—and Harley whistling 
the Barcarolle of Contes d’Hoffmann. 

“Farewell appearance of ‘Big Kelly’ today,” he 
announced, as he took the rough-neck clamp from 
the nurse and squirmed It to the sticking-point,'— 
legato — moderato. “I’m sure you don’t feel that?” 
—^jab, fortiore-spiritoso. 

“S—slightly,” the patient stammered.—“Gee- 
whiz I” 

“Yes, Kelly’s about through his engagement 
here”—another jab, forte — staccato, 

“Great-Scott! Doctor I!” 

“Soft pedal, please, on the applause I”—jab—jab 
^—scherzando — capriccioso, 

“Christopher Co-lum —bus I” 

“His tour’s nearly finished”—jab—jab—jab— 
andante — allegro — allegretto,, 

“Whew!—Jump—Ing—Jupiter I” 

“Let him jump.— You lie quiet—’til I’m through 
here”'—jabs— maestoso — fortissimo — furioso. 


220 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“Swear, if you like, sir,” the nurse encouraged. 

“Suf—fer—ing—Cats!—I beg your pardon, 
Miss Savile.” 

“That’s quite all right, sir. Dr. Harley doesn’t 
mind?” 

“No! Let her go! Shows vitality”—thrust 
robusto —“reserve-strength”'—jab feroce^ with a 
particularly merry deedle-dum-deedle- 

“Holy smoke!” 

“Much better swear than”—poke glissicando — 
“groan and whimper”—^scrape giubilando .— 

“Cassar’s ghost!” 

“Soon be done, sir.” 

“Yes, in a few minutes, now—fifteen or twenty” 
—jabs— presto — prestissimo - 

The patient, off-guard, moaned— prof undo ■ -■< — 

“Mute the ’cello, please. Miss Savile. Gets on 
my nerves!” 

The nurse flew to obey: gagged him gently with 
a kerchief drenched in cologne. 

“Last number on the programme”— recitativo — 
“unless you insist on an encore”—jabs— diminuendo 
'— rallentando. 

“Hell’s-bells!” rang faintly through the gag. 

“Concert’s over!”— cadenza — vivace^ 

“Thank you— pianissimo —doctor”— affettuoso. 

“Thanks, rather, to this good old Kelly—and 
Carrel-Dakin—who’s been working con amore! — 
And—some—neat—performance! That Peruvian- 






THE CONVALESCENTS 221 

Balsam, too, regular symphony!—What—Miss 
Savile?” n 

“Yes, sir—most attractive!” 

She reached for the deep-dredging clamp, but 
Harley withheld it. With a file he scratched on the 
handle a mark of identification. “Keep track of 
that Kelly,” he said: “He’s a tough party, but he’s 
lucky.—Now the bouquets. Miss Savile.” 

And while he frivolled vocally with MacDowell’s 
“Water-Lily” from a white wand, no thicker than 
a pencil, fell a shower of fluffy petals, light and pure 
as snow-flakes. A Hoppe-like twist of Sandra’s 
wrist wafted them, in a cloud, to the surgeon. He 
beamed approval: “One of the best things you do, 
young lady.” 

Then, to the patient: 

“Everything’s going fine! (Deedle-dum-deedle- 
dum.) We’ve had a lot of luck in this case (deedle- 
dum)—from the very first.” 

The patient gasped his gratitude for the constant 
care he’d had—devotion—the enormous skill. 

“Yes, yes, but every case has that—of course; but, 
sometimes, hang it, there’s no luck! Things go 
wrong—no matter what we do. Why, even in this 
case, with all our luck, there were a few days there 
when—well-” and, reminiscently, he fell to hum¬ 

ming as he worked, “O, Bury Bartholomew out in 
the Woods.” 

“It’s like a horse”—he resumed—“trained to the 
minute—in easy company—going strong—into first 



222 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

money—and then throwing a shoe or picking up a 
pebble in the last furlong. Or, maybe, just ‘quit¬ 
ting.’ In perfect form but out of luck.” And he 
went on to speak of Luck—openly, not fearing— 
despite Cartell’s sign of caution—silence—lest they 
hear: the myriad imps of mischance always waiting 
about, to turn the laugh on mortals when they get 
too gay and confident. 

One heard the word often, from these men of 
science. They made no bones of their belief in 
Chance. 

They spoke of luck as of an actual force in nature: 
not as a mere phrase or figure, myth or superstition, 
but as a vital agent for good or evil, like fire and 
water—only vastly more potent and cryptic. Pre¬ 
caution, care, skill, the last coup of science and in¬ 
vention—might not prevail against bad luck; not 
genius itself and Carrel-Dakin. They seemed to 
share Frothingham’s conviction ^ that “Luck is sim¬ 
ply untraced, and thus far untraceable law.”— 

A law that lynches, at times, with no more than a 
pin-scratch, a speck of dust, a draught through the 
key-hole, a tainted thread in the snowy gauze, a 
halting blood-drop—any one of a myriad nothings 
that make a joke of the supreme and solemn courts 
of science. 

Even Fenway—super-man among his kind— 
Cartell had heard acknowledge Luck and her baffling 

® Vide: “Religions of Humanity.” 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


223 

mystery; one horrid night, when the fickle lady was 
showing a bit of cold shoulder and lots of tempera¬ 
ture. 

A particularly ingenious imp had wriggled its 
way through the cordon of Carrel-Dakin, peroxide 
and what not of septic aversions. No bones were 
made of it. 

“When d’ you first-?” Fenway completed 

the query with some of the customary pantomime 
of nods, glances, passes-of-the-hand. 

The dressing-surgeon timed his first discovery, 
adding with proud enthusiasm; 

“Everything was quite attractive until-” 

“H’m h’m,” applauded Fenway: “And that’s 
where it is, eh?” 

The dressing-surgeon confirmed the locality, with 
a rather faint “Yes, sir.” 

“H’m, h’m,- Why didn’t you try the saline 

solution ?” 

The patient listened tensely for the reply; he 
sensed, too, the interest of the group about his bed. 

“Never thought of it, sir,” said Harley—which 
was frank at least. 

Through all this the patient’s eyes stared fixedly 
at the ceiling, preferring to evade the significance 
of the scene: but now they turned to face Fenway’s 
fateful retort: 

“H’m, h’m,” was his only comment, and of yore- 
ish tone; but then a quick “H’m h’m,” repeated, in a 
tone quite new that implied: ‘Well, my lad, from 





224 THE CONVALESCENTS 

the looks of things, I guess you’ve spilled the beans 
and smashed the apple cart’ . . . Aloud he advised 
Harley: “Get busy.” 

That is the limit I the patient is thinking. To 
have come through that ordeal of fire and steel 
upstairs, to have beaten that hundred-to-one chance, 
and then to be nosed-out, at the very finish, by a 
miserable little misbegotten bacillus of an added- 
starter whose entry no one had suspected- 

“This will happen, now and then,” Fenway says. 
“Despite every precaution and care, we can’t make 
sure against it. We’ll beat it, finally, but this sort of 
thing will turn up, now and then. Can’t tell why: 
seems just a matter of luck.” 

That from Fenway! Who worked with Faith— 
who believed profoundly that Guidance directed his 
hand and eye; that every marvel he wrought was 
by Faith alone. And who never could understand 
how Hampden, his closest professional associate, 
with whom he worked in twin-brotherhood—his 
very complement—and yet who was frankly materi¬ 
alistic, bowing only to pure Science: devoting his 
great gifts to the service of man with the spirit of a 
zealot but trusting utterly in the prowess that was 
his by chance and study and experience. 

Dr. Fenway couldn’t understand that ever—Miss 
Savile was telling the patient,—until, one day, after 
some happy stroke of their complemence, he burst 
out delighted, clapping his colleague on the shoulder: 

“There, Hampden, now I’ve solved it!—I see it 



THE CONVALESCENTS 225 

clearly. You have the Faith, man,—but you don’t 
know it I” 

So you see—the tone of her telling implied—there 
is something besides Luck I 

The journey-back—the unimagined, incredible, 
impossible return! There, in all reverence, is the 
Great Adventure. Rarer far than that other—the 
journey-out—richer of surprise, ineffably fairer of 
goal, stranger in wonders—— 

To lift the bitter draught of Lethe to the lips and 
find it turn to wine by the miracle of man’s skill; 
the inky waters of Oblivion magic to crystal Linda- 
raxa. ... To grope and stumble to the end of the 
dank road—the very edge of the pool where stands 
the greedy, insatiate Ferryman, sable-armored, 
poker-faced, hand outstretched for his toll—and 
then to be halted, turned back, the pilgrimage re¬ 
versed, by a compact, sturdy figure in tweeds— there 
begins the Great Adventure. . . . Death is the 
commonplace. Life is the miracle. The one plays 
with loaded dice: the sure-thing gambler: the odds 
offered, a sardonic jest. The skill that wins 
against such chances must needs have something of 
divinity. . . . 

Slow, the return—weeks and months; labored, 
tricky, strewn with springe and pitfall, mischance 
quick and cunning to trip, nature’s deviltries dogging 
every step. But, now, every step guided, guarded, 



226 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


heartened: coaxed and beckoned onward as the child 
is taught to walk. 

Never impatience, nor even boredom. Smiles at 
every turn, sweet-voices, watch that never wearies 
day or night, ceaseless care—again as for a child 
'—a show of personal concern akin to friendship, 
to affection even, or its welcome counterfeit. ‘Part 
of the job!’ Yes, perhaps, but the artistic workman¬ 
ship!—the grace and cunning of it.—You might 
think Yvette Guilbert taught them their ‘Good morn¬ 
ing, sir’—the way they say it; like the invitation of 
L’Allegro. You come to count it a joyous station 
in The Great Adventure. 

And so their ‘Good night—pleasant dreams, sir!’ 
—not a mere trite courtesy, a euphemism for good- 
riddance; but a regretful adieu; like the refrain of 
a serenade. ‘Part of the job!’ Yes, yes—but it 
helps. . . . 

Then the wonder-day of the journey! The trail 
grown easier, surer. A far glimpse, at times, of the 
clearing beyond. . . . 

No longer a mere case:—“that man in ‘73’.” Col¬ 
league, now, collaborateur! One of them! Had a 
hand in the job! They tell you so; make you believe 
it—almost. “You worked along with us. That 
means a.lot.” 

You can’t but smile, denying. ‘Worked along 
with us’—when you’ve merely drifted along, pas¬ 
sive, helpless, often indifferent; the mind utterly 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


227 

vacant except for an obsessing sense of confidence in 

the genius of these men, to which you hold by some 
queer subliminal assertion of—^you don’t know what. 
Beyond that you’ve done nothing. And that, of 
course, you haven’t done consciously. But they in¬ 
sist that ‘you worked along.’ 

And it helps^—that attitude of theirs. A will 
does, somehow, insinuate, or a longing, not to dis¬ 
appoint them—their skill and zeal of service—some¬ 
thing more than professional'—and their seeming 
certainty of a ‘darn good job.’ (Kreweson, the 
house-physician, is violently sanguine, almost savage. 
He needs the room. That is among the earliest 
clear-cut impressions after the ether wears off: 
Kreweson’s ceaseless quest of the room.) . . . 
You’ve seen them smile broadly—trade jolly augur- 
winks—over the bounding record. Heard their 
exultant chuckles—‘H’m! H’m!—Well I Well!— 
What do you know about that!’—as they survey the 
clean-knitting stab. . . . 

The nurses, too, they dislike to lose a case—no 
matter what you hear. That student-nurse, es¬ 
pecially—worn to a wraith over the case—shabby to 
disappoint her. . . . And you’d like a chance some 
day to know her better—when you’ve had a hair-cut 
and a regular shave, a collar on and no more entre- 
nous sponge-baths. You mould like to live until 
those disconcerting dabs become a dim remembrance. 
. . . It all helps. 


228 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


Nothing so thrills a patient as the final exit of 
“Big Kelly,” with his crew of wreckers, plumbers 
and riveters. To Harley he might image a basso- 
profundo; to Cartell he loomed always as a big, 
burly. Boss contractor. Done, now, his rough work: 
drawn his last pay of groans soft-pedalled, and tor¬ 
ture crunched to whimpers. In sheer joy of it the 
patient laughs nervously, almost childishly. He’d 
like to shout or sing or—celebrate somehow! 

“There are services in the chapel at eleven 
o’clock,” the nurse suggests quite casually. “You’ll 
be fully rested by then.—The change of scene might 
be pleasant for you.” 

“Yes, of course, but-” 

“And good chance to show Dr. Fenway how 
you’ve gotten on. He’s sure to be there. And we- 
all think he rather likes to see his patients in the 
chapel.” 

Never till now, it struck Cartell, had he heard 
one word of religion; seen none of the conventional 
tokens of piety. Less, indeed, than confronts you 
in the modern hotel where, always, you surprise the 
badly-printed, virgin bible consorting on the dresser 
with the menus of club-breakfasts and the pink 
laundry-list. 

And yet the place was essentially religious, frankly 
sectarian; candid, close, haughty as a Chinese-wall, 
from the name-stone over the door to the silent ban 
against factors of possible friction in the student- 



THE CONVALESCENTS 229 

house. That was the manner of B. M. H.—human 
as the Blue-Book. And there it ended—at the social 
gate for the nurses. Beyond, the spirit of divinity 
ruled; the human gave way to humanity. Every 
portal quick to open—to cross, crescent, ark or idol. 
With no catechism of creed, race or station. The 
single sesame, suffering: the watch-word, service. 

But never spoken—the words. Nor their cog¬ 
nates; duty, humanity, mission, higher-call: nor any 
cant of martyrdom. 

There may have been—probably, in that diverse 
company—some girls who obeyed the urge of re¬ 
ligion and sacrifice; but with no pose or gesture of 
conscious virtue. It was as if a code, unwritten, un- 
thought of, forbade hint of priggishness or unction. 
Good taste abjured it as bad style. It didn’t go with 
blue-gingham—any more than a pink hair-ribbon. 
Simply, wasn’t being done.—That was the morale 
of the place. 

Had you put it so to these nurses they’d have 
wondered what-on-earth you were talking about I 
Nothing so bumptious as a morale in their phi¬ 
losophy. At least, they weren’t conscient of it. No 
more than of the suave voice, the light tread, a 
quality of unstudied gentleness, a cast of thought and 
sentiment eternal-feminine, a manner of deference— 
survival of pristine womanhood—that made them 
seem of a different race. 

Or, possibly, only of a different time. They wore 
their spiritual graces with native ease, unconscious 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


230 

habit—just as they spoke the English of Jane 
Austen, played the horses, revered the ancient fame 
of mint-juleps, and used the “sir” and “ma’am” of 
antique courtesy that youth, elsewhere, discards, 
even at the snippy age, as shibboleth of servility. 


CHAPTER XXI 


SPRING IN TINICUM MEWS 

B eyond the scant gardens of the hospital, 
across a lane of a street, bloomed Tinicum 
Mews—the May-fair of Afric fashion; houses trim- 
kept as those of any color of similar station, and 
more picturesque: flower-boxes at the windows and, 
frequently, a canary-cage. 

From one house, a victrola tenored:^—“You’re 
Mighty Lak’ a Rose.” Against the jamb of the 
open door languored a young mulatta: tall, lithe, 
supple, leopard-sleek, in the regnant costume of the 
country; skirt of black charmeuse, cut high: geor¬ 
gette waist, cut low: patent-leather pumps and— 
bobbed hair! 

She stood listless, gazing into space, oblivious of 
the song within, the shouting children hop-scotching 
on the pavement, the rival belles coquetting on neigh¬ 
bor door-steps, the screeching white cock-a-too in a 
wicker-cage just over her head. She might have 
been the only living creature in the world—until 
there swaggered up the steps to her side an obstrep¬ 
erously new Spring suit, of pale green, twirling a 

cane, a boutonniere in his coat and, apparently, the 

231 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


232 

latest bon-mot on his lips. For gone now the 
languor I Instead, a flashing smile, volleys of laugh¬ 
ter, a hysteria of gayety; then an eager, flaunting 
prance up and down the street, arm-in-arm. 

Cartell’s gaze followed them. They had youth, 
vigor, strength, health—and Spring. Nothing else 
matters—was his mood: not even the tragedy of 
color. 

Hucksters, jousting for the trade of the lane, 
brought pictures of Spring in their latticed caravans 
and songs of Spring in their challenging cries— 
‘Tomatoes—potatoes'—new carrots—peas!’ Cartell 
wished he could shout like that. Tried to, and 
smiled to find his voice a mere husk. 

A hand-organ came along and played—as only an 
Italian can play the hand-organ in Spring-time; tan¬ 
goes, trots, waltzes, tarantellas, two-steps—his 
whole repertoire. For soon he was making money 
—and eyes at the dark fanciulla in the door-way. 
Not so much darker than his own kind, and, besides, 
the Latins.—And he had set the bambine a-dancing. 
He enjoyed that, too: troops of grinning children— 
whose varied shades of color told a story,—even the 
tiniest toddling to the measure. 

The street was in carnival, all the world that Car¬ 
tell could see and feel—in carnival. Spring brought 
wine to the air. The sky flew banners of rose and 
gold. The budding trees—locust, maple, magnolias 
—gave of their myrrh and attar. From the garden 
below the porch, lilac, honey-suckle and arbutus of- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 233 

fered incense to renascent Nature. A thousand win¬ 
dows mirrored illumination: countless lanterns—vio¬ 
let, indigo, ochre, green, crimson, amber—all sal¬ 
vaged from the sinking sun. 

On a hill-top, in the distance, an ungainly mansion 
of Caen-stone—palazzetto—preened its fancied 
splendours in the sun-tinted waters of terrace foun¬ 
tains; running-riot with the Renaissance and the 
profits of a patent headache-powder. 

Swallows, pigeons, sparrows, other birds-about- 
town, flew about restlessly, uncertainly, calling in¬ 
vitingly, anxiously, querulously, questing companion¬ 
ship ’gainst the coming night and its loneliness. 
Yokel crows, in the suburbs, cawed complainingly, 
as if out-of-patience with some laggard “date.” In 
the central blue over the park, far, far up, two 
fish-hawks poised side by side above the lake, ap¬ 
parently selecting the menu of a souper-a-deiix. 

Carnival everywhere—except on the tree-branch 
overhanging the balcony—there—a solitary oriole, 
all fussed-up in fresh Spring scarlet, with a look 
of somewhere-to-go-but-no-one-to-go-with, gazes dis¬ 
consolately at a couple of dowdy sparrows flirting 
outrageously. 

A wonderfully beautiful world—^young, strong, 
gay, glowing even in the deepening twilight. 


Of late all the atmosphere of the place had been 
electric with gayety. The nurses tingled and 



234 the convalescents 

sparkled with it. Sluggard patients responded, 
jolted to convalescence by the pervasive cheer. If 
one, stubborn, stuck his temper or grouch Into that 
frolic current he’d get the stinging come-back of a 
Leyden-jar. 

The prospect of Graduation—now only a few 
days off—^was a vista strung In festoons of new 
gowns—modish mufti after three years of service- 
blue—dinners, tea-dances, theatre-parties; vlllegla- 
tures in the hunting-country, the Eastern shore. 
White Sulphur, the Alleghanies. All the varied ex¬ 
citements of forty coming-outs, all together, under 
one roof. 

Over two or three caps bride-veils were already 
floating: and In the weaving for twice as many— 
despite their sworn spinsterhood. . . . Those caps 
are only pinned on—not rivetted. 

There was a continual coming of presents from 
parents, friends and beaux, and a constant trade of 
their hurried display. In corridors, chart-room, dlet- 
kltchens, verandahs. ‘Attractive!’ out-of-breath 
from repeated admirations, gave place to ‘Most at¬ 
tractive!’ No gift missed the superlative acclaim; 
Miss Savile’s circlet of amber beads might have been 
the necklace of Saltaphernes: Miss Morell’s pink 
tourmaline paled the Orloff or Kohinoor. Kerchiefs 
of cambric turned to poInt-d’Alencon. A box of silk 
stockings—to the Bishop’s daughter—^was as good 
as a trousseau. And as for the sweaters—no mere 
rainbow could supply all those colors! Every girl. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 235 

apparently, had made one for every other girl in 
the class, and the interchange buzzed like the rug- 
fair at Pera. 

Less than ever, now, like a hospital. More than 
ever like a house-party. . . . “Hardly—with all 
those patients in plain view!” No, no—merely 
some of the guests, tired-out or slightly indisposed, 
having a snack in their rooms. They’ll all be out 
here, presently, on the verandah. “Yes, but—” sniff 
—sniff I—“that’s surely ether, in the halls.” Ether, 
your grandmother!—that’s some thrifty soul clean¬ 
ing her gloves with economy and carbona. 

There, on the Porch rail, are some of Miss 
Savile’s— mousquetaires —put to dry in the westing 
sun while she hurries off to supper, calling back, at 
the door: “I won’t be long, sir!” Just as she’d al¬ 
ways said—just as every nurse says on leaving the 
patient, if for a moment or an hour. And always 
in the same, impersonal tone that Miss Savile had 
used. It’s a mere formula, of course. And yet, 
perhaps, her tone today was somewhat different: a 
trifle less professional: a trifle more—^more—“Rub¬ 
bish!” reason growled: “don’t be a fool!” 

Her cape repeated it. She had tossed it on the 
chair near Cartell’s, when she went in. ’Gainst the 
rules—to leave things about on the Porch—^but no 
one there now except her own patient, and rules 
relax in sight of Graduation. Besides, who cares 
a hang for rules in Spring-time? “Still . . don’t 


236 THE CONVALESCENTS 

be a fool I” the cape repeated, not unkindly but 
firmly. 

It was of blue—lighter than her uniform—of 
military cut, and she rather swaggered in it, uncon¬ 
sciously a la vivandiere. He gazed at it fixedly, with 
curious intensity, fascinated, imagining her presence 
within its fold. Reached out his hand to touch 
the cloak; so vivid the image of her^—in the strange, 
uncanny way that apparel comes to resemble the 
owner. . . . Yes, he would—he’d tell her I This 
might be his last chance. 

He counted the days to the Graduation; she’d 
be leaving immediately after, her plans all made 
for a jolly summer of rest and travel; when she’d 
return he’d be gone—somewhere! He wasn’t sure. 
No more the doctors. They spoke fair, but—‘we’ll 
wait and see.’ Still . . . what harm? He’d like 
her to know—how these months of companionship, 
eager care, devotion, had come, little by little—‘No, 
instantly!—Sandra, long ago—from the very first 
—he had known—Don’t be a damn fool!’ he 
punched at himself, laughing, and mightily pleased 
that he still had sense enough to realize his folly 
—the utter absurdity. . . . And yet it did happen 
so—often—patient and nurse—abound to happen— 
inevitably, in common belief. So that the frequence 
has moulded phrases and philosophy ready-to- 
hand:— 

‘Propinquity does it?’ So they say—the pundits; 


THE CONVALESCENTS 237 

it’s obvious and easy. And they’ll cite you Plato, 
Luther, Kraft-Ebbing, Schopenhauer. 

‘Wiles and stratagems!’ So more say—mostly 
those of their own gentle sex. Speak of service and 
sacrifice, and they’ll answer traps and snares—for 
the other sex. . . . ‘Abundant game here, and al¬ 
ways open-season.’ . . . ‘No fool like an old fool, 
except a sick one—and he’s worse.’ 

‘Pity.’ Some say that—the foolish; and quote 
you “Oronooko” and Shakespeare—who never 
hesitates to hang the truth when it kills a phrase. 

Still, even pity—faute-de-mieux—will serve. ‘Not 
twenty-one 1 She’s scarcely that. Don’t be a—They 
have your age, there, in the record of the case. 
Why the devil did you have to—?—’Tisn’t a Cen¬ 
sus Report, nor a Bureau of Vital Statistics.’ 

An utter melancholy gripped him, body, soul and 
mind: gripped him like a vise, so that it hurt and 
the pain welled up to his eyes; and Miss Savile, come 
to say good-night, protested: 

“At it again, sir! We can’t leave you alone 
for ten minutes but you’re off thinking. I won’t al¬ 
low it, sir. Why, you’ve had a perfect day.” 

“That’s just what I was thinking. All in all I 
have had a perfect day—^but what a hell of a finish!” 

“If you feel that way, she humored, with pretense 
of annoyance, “have it so!” 

“What?” 

“That h- 


kind of a finish you spoke of.—^ 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


238 

‘Boy!’ she called: ‘Page Mr. Pol Roger and the 
Haig family! Never mind, boy—Pll find them— 
in ’73.’—Which would you like, sir,—the Cham¬ 
pagne or Scotch?” 

“Both sound attractive.—But you don’t believe in 
stimulants?” 

“No, I don’t, but you do. You think it helps 
you, and while the delusion lasts I suppose we’ll have 
to indulge it.” 

“‘Science,’ eh?” 

“No! ‘Free expression.’ No inhibitions. I’ve 
told you all about it before.” 

Yes, he recalled.—“Something to do with swear¬ 
ing and bread-pudding.—The theory certainly made 
good in that case.” 

“Never fails, sir. Try it out, for yourself, the 
rest of the time you’re still here. Have what you 
like—do as you like—say what you like.” 

“That’s a large order—on a day like this—‘Say 
what you like.’ You might think it blithering 
idiocy.” 

“That’s all right,” she said,—“so long as you 
think it’s sensible.” 

H’m.—He knew there was a catch somewhere in 
the theory. 

He sipped the suave, saffron wine, leaning at the 
rail of the balcony. With the last drop, he faced 
the West and exclaimed to space with surprising 
vigor: “A perfect day—I’ll tell the world!” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 239 

“Leaving me to tell the doctors—and get called 
down properly—for not asking them first.” 

“I asked them days ago,” he reassured her,—^ 
“soon as the champagne was sent to me.” 

“Doctor Fenway, I’m sure, forbade it. He al¬ 
ways does, even in pneumonia.” 

“He only said: ‘We’ll talk about that later.’ ” 

“Yes, very much later, you’ll find! And Dr. 
Hampden?” 

“ ‘Try it,’ he said,—‘see what happens. Can’t 
tell, ’till we try it. Don’t know much ’bout any¬ 
thing, ’till we try it.’ ” 

“And Doctor Kreweson?” 

“‘No good!’ he thinks. ‘Cut it out! Reaction 
bad.’ ” 

“There! You see!” she triumphed. 

“Yes, but Doctor Tantree.-” 

“Read you a lecture—on alcohol!” 

“First off, yes. Then he read the label and— 
‘Go to it, man, go to it!’—Quot homines, tot sen- 
tentiae.” 

“Indeed I’ll quote him, first chance I get.—What 
does it mean, sir?” 

“Four expert opinions and all different. Now 
where are you?” 

“Up in the air. But no matter.—You’re almost 
through here now—only a few days more, sir, and 
I’ll be coming to tell you: ‘Taxi’s waiting!’ I shall 
always look back to that as one of the happiest 
days in my life as a nurse—when I saw my patient 



240 THE CONVALESCENTS 

—my first serious case—walk out of here, on his 
way to perfect health, just as though nothing had 
ever happened!” 

His dulled wits framed only the obvious: “All 
thanks to you^ girl.” 

“Nonsense! She gave the thermometer the 
preparatory flick. “You know what Doctor Harley 
said: You-all had luck.” 

“Yes—but I shall always go on believing that you 
—Sandra-” 

“Bosh !”—and the thermometer—stopped him, 
for the prescribed minutes, during which her gaze 
was fixed on the window at his back. 

“I shall always believe,” he resumed, despite her 
protesting gesture—“that ‘bosh’ and ‘nonsense’ 
paralyze ‘free expression.’ ” 

“So they should, sir,” she muttered through a 
ripple of laughter,—“when half-a-dozen of the 
girls—there, in the diet-kitchen—are pretending to 
be so terribly busy that they couldn’t possibly hear 
a word from the verandah.” 



CHAPTER XXII 


THE IMPS OF MISCHANCE TAKE 

A HOLIDAY 

R egular as a lunar eclipse, a curious, inex¬ 
plicable phenomenon recurs on Graduation- 
day: there are no operations! The routine of the 
hospital goes on, without break or change in the 
least detail, except—no operations I 

Because no occasion for them—no need of them 
—and even no excuse for them. Human anatomy 
runs straight today. Every member of the inner 
circle seems honor-bound to behave with decorum. 
Even the capricious, flirtatious appendix—usually 
springing some sudden mischief—cuts out the didoes. 
The younger set, like the tonsils and the sub-deb 
adenoids, postpone their outings. Preparedness 
stands on tip-toe, as always, keen to the clang of 
the ambulance; but nothing happens. Not even the 
inevitable emergency. Autos fail to maim today— 
try as they will; the unloaded pistol sends the bul¬ 
let a-miss; lollipops, apple-size, designed to choke 
the gurgling babe-in-arms, melt under the magic of 

the day and trickle pleasingly into the tiny tum-tum. 

241 


242 THE CONVALESCENTS 

Even the cough-drops, swallowed in the dark, for¬ 
get to turn into bichloride tablets. 

‘Luck?’ In part, perhaps; but more likely cus¬ 
tom and tradition; and a gentlemen’s-agreement 
among germs, microbes, bacilli and all the Imps of 
Mischance to hold-off for the day. “Aprcs vous, 
Mesdemolselles!”—one imagines them bowing to 
the blue-garbed troop drawn up on the platform: 
“This Is your hour.” 

In that spirit of deference the clergyman ad¬ 
dresses them; his speech a grateful blend of fervid 
devotion and polite discretion. He is, throughout, 
the man of God and the man of the world. 

The perils and the temptations that beset the 
nurse’s calling he pointed to plainly; but he touched 
them lightly. . . . They had seen it done quite dif¬ 
ferently only a few days before, in a public “drive” 
for nurses; a heavy hand had dragged before them, 
from over-there, ‘horrible examples’:—drunkenness, 
licentiousness, impiety and cigarettes. A fanatic 
voice told of ‘the red badge of sacrifice smirched 
by scarlet spangles I’ And they had hardly listened; 
or, else, amused. Today they heard, spellbound, a 
casual hint, low-voiced and matter-of-fact:— 

“And when evening comes, with the natural re¬ 
action from long hours of trying service, and the 
nerves give ’way, and you yearn for relaxation,— 
that Is the time to be—watchful, on guard against” 
—he hesitated, while his eye scanned the rows of 


THE CONVALESCENTS 243 

youth and loveliness—then went on: “’gainst dis¬ 
tractions—dangerous distractions.” 

Neat work! thought Cartell. And that the les¬ 
son went home you could hear in the tearful drone 
with which they now began their class-song: 

Work, for the night is coming 
Work through the morning hours 
Work while the dew is sparkling 
Work ’mid springing flowers. 

Work when the day grows brighter 
Work in the glowing sun 
Work, for the night is coming 
When man’s work is done. 

Their sweet, young voices quavered and broke 
under the tragedy of those last two lines. A Galll- 
Curci might scoff at the technique; but a Schumann- 
Heink would envy the effect. 

Why don’t they sing like that at the Opera? 
Cartell wondered. Who ever saw anyone crying 
at the Metropolitan—over “Faust”—“Romeo and 
Juliet”—“Cavalleria”—or even sniffling? His 
neighbors were, stifling boo-hoo’s, some of them— 
men as well as women, visitors no less than patients. 
He should, too, in another minute—and so crowded- 
in, hang it! he couldn’t get at his handkerchief- 

Just then, without warning, the solemn hymn 
switched, swung and danced—words and music— 
into the class-song proper; set to a grig of a two- 
step—a regular rake of a tune. Sort that makes 
formal Terpsichore kick up her heels. And words 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


244 

to fit—a rib-tickling gibe at their gingham in the 
very first line, a roaring dig at the Rules in the next, 
a slam at the internes, a guy of the oft-recurring 
goulasch- 

The clergymen on the platform sat up, startled 
straight. Looked to Dr. Fenway, Dr. Hampden, 
the Board-of-Directors, then about—at the students, 
the audience, at each other; perplexed, amazed, be¬ 
wildered, open-mouthed and, the next second,— 
shaking with laughter! red-faced and unashamed. 
Which relieved the audience mightily. For till now 
the families and friends of the graduates sat flab¬ 
bergasted by the theatric trick. For that it was; 
a prize-number for a musical-comedy. The song 
that made the show. In his mind’s eye, Cartell saw 
the smiling chorus troop out front on a run-way, 
amid calls for Author! Author! 

The Bishop’s daughter wrote the words; Miss 
Killarney—who wouldn’t dance—wrote the two- 
step, transposing the sober hymn with the sort of 
cunning that jollied a muezzin-song into “Darda- 
nella.” What of verve the composer missed, the 
pianiste vamped. The choristers carried-off the 
trick with histrionism quite prodigious—for a hos¬ 
pital. 

“Scratch the nurse and find the actress!” Tala- 
poff exclaims. 

The Finnish feministe finds in the drama of hos¬ 
pital-service a considerable factor of “The Nurse- 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


245 

Motif.” In his treatise of that title he asserts: 
“To experience whelming emotion only that she 
may bend it to noble purpose or exult in its dis¬ 
sembling is dream and instinct of the sex. The robe 
of the nurse is for her at once the cloak of Samaria 
and the mantle of Thespia.” ^ 

Choosing so—and habit prompting—one may 
find at every turn likeness of the theatre. Obviously, 
of course, the costume: spick-and-span always as 
though scanned by the most exigent of ward-robe 
women; trim of fit, of antique cut that mingles Red- 
fern and Rembrandt, chic and piquante to puzzle¬ 
ment save by comparison with the horrid grotesques 
of the day’s modes. 

Stubborn and wilful must be homeliness that per¬ 
sists in that costume. Only a girl who hardens her 
heart—and her features—against winsomeness can 
prevail against it. Whence comes, doubtless, the 
rule of feminine beauty here as in the theatre: a 
peculiar level of charm, or the illusion of it. So 
that in common speech an adjective of grace at¬ 
taches spontaneously to nurse as to actress. 

The theatre makes shrewd advantage of the cos¬ 
tume; calls it player-proof and critic-proof. No 
actress has ever gone wrong in the nurse’s garb. 
Some who in sartorial splendors have always left the 
audience cold struck unsuspected fire in this simplest 

^The publisher has been unable to verify this quotation, and 
others cited by Cartell from the same source, in any of the avail¬ 
able works of Professor Talapoff. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


246 

adornment. Of the three actresses now foremost in 
public favor, two came to fame over night in the 
nurse’s frock, and the third in the costume most 
nearly like it. 

Often, too, stage-craft orders the scene; bleak, 
bare corridors and public-wards shift, in a jiffy, to 
a garden-set of exotic brilliance. Doors ajar show 
the floral luxuriance of a prima-donna’s dressing 
room. The glow and fragrance of an opera pre¬ 
miere proclaim the advent of a social “star.” 

The smooth routine of the theatre is here: the 
precision of appointed role: the minute-hand punctu¬ 
ality: the etiquette of deference nicely graduated to 
rank and post. And off-stage—the Finn detects— 
a spirit of gaiety even while tragedy stalks the 
boards. 

This gaiety, at which some rail, some marvel, 
he sees to be a mask. “With the nurse it is as with 
the player, who to retain control of his mimic fac¬ 
ulties must conquer his actual emotions—presuming, 
of course, that he have any—or conceal them utterly. 
He may not hope to pass the real for the counter¬ 
feit. To pretend the best, he must feel the 
least.” . . . 

A Booth or Forrest could—and, on occasion did 
—interrupt the lament of Lear with a sotto-voce 
jest of his blubbering audience or a josh to his 
companion-players. Mansfield, naturally sullen and 
morose, larked like a school-boy throughout the hor¬ 
rors of “Jekyll and Hyde.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 247 

Sarah Bernhardt, feeling nothing or little of the 
corroding emotions she simulated so skilfully, en¬ 
dures for eighty years. Eleonora Duse, immeasur¬ 
ably higher-strung, her whole being attuned to sym¬ 
pathy, responding irresistibly to tragic suggestion, 
is quickly consumed by this very vibrance. Bern¬ 
hardt used for her scenic tricks her own voix-d’or 
and the consummate mechanics of the Conserva¬ 
toire ; Duse used—and used-up—her very heart and 
soul. The French woman played with fire and 
fooled the audience; the Italian played in fire—and 
fooled herself. 

These things, the patent circumstance; the garb 
and complexion of the theatre. Deeper one dis¬ 
cerns the semblance in spirit and allure. The im¬ 
pulse of high achievement, the excitements of rivalry, 
the wine and fever of new hazards. That above 
all else—the interest refreshed by constant change. 
A continuous performance but always with new audi¬ 
ences treading on each other’s heels, and play-bills 
varied as the souls and forms and fates of man¬ 
kind. . . . Tragedy, comedy, farce, burlesque. 
Each new case a new adventure—a new role to 
study and play-upon; success or failure often so 
equally balanced—just as in the theatre—that a trifle 
turns the scale from Atlantic City to the Celestial 
City; quite as salubrious as the other, these days, 
and not nearly so crowded. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE GREAT STRIKE 

M ISS SAVILE’S charge of the case would end, 
automatically, with her graduation. She had 
consented, however, to remain the week or two 
pending the patient’s dismissal. 

Immediately after the exercises she resumed the 
routine of her post, until he insisted that she take 
the rest of the day off—“and tomorrow as well.” 

“Certainly not, sir.—Wouldn’t do at all—my 
first day of this—” holding up the diploma that Dr. 
Fenway had handed her.—“I’ll be in at the usual 
hour.” 

Cartell forbade it: “You’ll still be dancing then 
—or pop-overs.” 

“Indeed we won’t, sir I All the musicians in town 
are going to strike tonight. And we must stop at 
twelve sharp, the Union says. So expect me at the 
usual hour—and please be awake, sir. You’re the 
last patient to see me in' blue-gingham, and you’ll 
be the first to see me in white. Isn’t it all—splen¬ 
did!” 

Her eyes sparkled with pride, exaltation—as 

might a young queen donning her coronation robe. 

248 


THE CONVALESCENTS 249 

“Remember me when thou comest into thy king¬ 
dom,” he said. 

“Yes, sir,” habit answered. “And meanwhile you 
ought to sleep till dinner. I’m sure the Graduation 
tired you. Your eyes are half closed now.—Good 
night, sir,” rather huskily, and reached out her 
hand, for the first time. 

In the hall she encountered Mrs. Comley-Dray- 
cott, rounding up the graduates for a dinner-party. 
Sudden idea of hers—on learning that the Board- 
of-Directors had no fund applicable to especial en¬ 
tertainment of the class. She told the Board to 
go ahead, engage a restaurant and send the bill to 
her. When they declined—only, they said, because 
of rumors of an impending strike of cooks and 
waiters throughout the city—the lady invited the 
girls to her home. ‘Dinner at seven’ she promised— 
‘and she’d send them on to the dance in ample time.’ 
. . . Incidentally, when her guests arrived they 
found that their hostess had quite forgotten that 
her entire kitchen-staff had walked out in sympathy 
with the striking tin-roofers immediately after 
luncheon. 

Sandra, hurried by this new engagement, flew 
down the stairs, through^the hall, across the bridge 
to the student-house.—Tragedy at her heels— 
pushed into the room, pointed about, with fiendish 
grin, and asked mockingly; “Where is it?”—At the 
office, most likely, Sandra told herself. But, on 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


250 

inquiry, it wasn’t; nor anywhere else in the build¬ 
ing. 

She ’phoned frantically: “Maison-de-Paris.” No 
answer, of course: the shop closed at five. She 
called up Madame’s house-number. 

“Oh, Madame Therese—my gown didn’t come 
home!” 

“Oui, oui. N’est pas finie!” 

“O, but my dear woman—you promised - 

“Oui, oui, mais mes filles sont on strike.” 

“But what shall I do? What ever shall I-” 

“Je ne sais pas—pas-de-tout.—Don’ know.” 

“Well, I’m sure / know—that you’re—^you’re— 
a—a—ssassin!” 

“Oui, oui!”—and Madame hung up. 

Sandra put out the lights, locked the door, kept 
perfectly still. The others mustn’t know of the mis¬ 
hap: would only spoil their evening: she wouldn’t 
be a kill-joy. 

Soon she heard them in the corridor—laughing 
—chattering—complimenting one-another’s cos¬ 
tume. Some stopped at her door, knocked, tried 
the knob: calling “Sandra!”—‘Sandra!” and, after 
no response: “She must have gone!” 

To the pillow that stifled her sobs she confided 
what she was going to do to Madame Therese— 
yes, if it cost her license! In her rage she saw 
countless stars spangling the pillow in its remotest 
depths, blinding her eyes with their swimming bril¬ 
liance, so that, frightened, she looked up—but only 




THE CONVALESCENTS 


251 

to see more stars—constellations, nebulae, galaxies 
—glinting through clouds of tulle. 

“Oh, my dear Mrs. Moncrieff!-” 

“Now don’t cry—and get your nose red 1 ” 

“I’d like to— kill —Therese !” 

“Yes, of course! But don’t! Always makes such 
a row—and gets into the newspapers. You mustn’t 
do it!—B. M. H. wouldn’t like it 1 ” 

“Oh, but you don’t know-” 

“Oui, oui!—I knew this would happen. That 
shop’s an awful liar—‘Maison-de-Paris’—I know 
them—and their oui-oui’s. Stick your bones into 
this—quick! You haven’t much time. Nor I—to 
get to the Post Office with this animal-story. I’ll 
send the Sedan back for you.” 

Sandra found the pumpkin-colored car at the 
door, ten minutes later—and the chauffeur under¬ 
neath ! Something wrong with the magneto.— 
Couldn’t tell what.—Might take an hour or two! 
“Get a taxi—quick—please.” 

They tried: called up Brown—Green—Blue— 
Black-and-White: 

‘Nothing doing! Men all out on a strike.’ 

Half way down the block a gong clanged. The 
Fire-House! Sandra flew, but when she reached 
the door the horses were already stamping back 
to their stalls. ‘Strike?—Et tu. Brutes?’ No, test- 
alarm, only. 

Breathless, panting, she could only plead-r- 
“Please, sir, hurry—please.” 




THE CONVALESCENTS 


252 

“Where’s the fire?” 

“Opera-house! No fire—Ball! Please take me.” 

“Good lord, Miss, we can’t take you to a Ball! 
What’s matter with the street-cars.” 

“Not running. Chief,” some-one explained; 
“strike.” 

“And the taxis, too I” Sandra sobbed. “O, you-all 
want to break my heart.” 

“No, Miss, but we-all can’t break rules, either. 
Where you from?”—he asked anxiously: “What 
asylum?” he was thinking. 

“Hospital—’cross the street.” 

“Those folks fixed you up. Chief, that time you- 
all were pitched from the ladder-wagon. That’s 
the kid nursed you.” 

“Hell you say”—and quoted; ‘So light to the cart 
the fair lady he swung, so light to a seat beside her 
he sprung’—but first putting on a last-century fire- 
helmet. The town is so conservative! 

“Pll likely get broke for this, but—my name’s 
MacArthur, Miss.” 

“Attractive, sir! But faster, Mac, faster!”— 
and she seized the lines from his hands—resistless 
from sheer amazement. 

Maybe people didn’t stare and gape at the sight 
and shout their wonder! 

“Great Scott—what do you know about that?” 

“Some driver—I’ll tell the world!” 

“Movie-stuff?” 

“Woman’s-rights stunt?” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 253 

“Strike-breaker?” 

“Nawl Fire-Chief, givin’ his Mathilda-Jane a 
• And we pay taxes for that I” 

“Worth it, too!” 

Rather! Just one fleet vision of that strange 
little figure perched high on the hose-cart: clad in 
silvery white that flashed and spangled anew under 
each corner-lamp. ’Round corners—down the car- 
tracked street, through to Park Lane, ’cross the 
Square-of-the-Fountain, through a maze of strike- 
abandoned trolleys, trucks and taxis, she guided the 
Arabs—cool, confident, debonair, as though tooling 
a tandem through a country-lane. 

It was a gala night, for all the strike at midnight. 
A wonderfully beautiful, magical Ball; the town 
hadn’t seen its like in years—nothing to compare 
with its splendors and surprises—not since the night 
that gorgeous Betty danced into the heart of an 
Emperor’s brother and to the very edge of a throne. 

Cartell saw the carnival from behind the masking 
curtains of a stage-box. It was Captain Jim’s idea: 
to walk him out of the hospital—while Miss New- 
lands was preparing the supper-tray—into the wait¬ 
ing taxi—and off to the Opera House. 

The dance was in full swing when they arrived: 
the floor crowded: every one there, apparently, of 
the Hospital staff and from half-a-dozen others. 

But no Miss Savile! 

Cartell searched everywhere in the swirling 


254 the convalescents 

throng, but couldn’t find her: then sent Captain Jim 
to the floor below, to learn, discreetly, if she were 
there. 

Hadn’t arrived, he reported: probably at the very 
last moment, put on an emergency case. That often 
happened. They must go to fetch her, Cartell in¬ 
sisted. 

Too late, alas! The hour is striking twelve I The 
fiddlers jump up from their chairs—^breaking a 
polka square in two, and disappear under the stage. 

But the measure goes straight on I 

In the place of the half-dozen time-punchers are 
musicians—a score or more—in scarlet jacket, vel¬ 
vet-collared and gold-frogged: the Red Hungarians 
of old—before Hungary turned Red and when 
Buda-Pesth was still the gayest of capitals. . . . 
Larry, Doctor Hampden’s son—he of the jazz- 
clinic—is leading them, with the fiery gestures of 
Mr. Sousa, but still sober-faced and horn-spectacled. 
And Cartell marvelled that all the players were 
exactly like him; as like as peas-in-the-pod; first- 
fiddles and second, ’cello, harp, trombones, horns, 
drum—snare and base—all boyish-young, like 
Larry'—sober-faced and horn-spectacled. 

Cartell felt the lure of the music, crescent every 
moment—and suddenly the vision of Miss Savile, 
appearing from nowhere, in the throng of dancers: 
borne along, light as thistle-down, on Doctor Har¬ 
ley’s arm. Mostly with him she danced, Cartell 
observed. Now and then they’d glance up at the 


THE CONVALESCENTS 255 

box, smiled and nodded to Cartell, not in the least 
amazed to see him there. 

He rose abruptly, as if to leave, and the Captain 
made to help him in his coat. But Cartell said 
“No:” he was going on the floor—to dance. Cap¬ 
tain Jim sought to restrain him: pointing out the 
danger—he could hardly stand now!—the wrath of 
the doctors—the nurses would be blamed—and, 
finally, pointed to Cartell’s street-clothes—he 
couldn’t go on the floor in those! There were 
others there not de-rigueur, Cartell protested; a 
dozen or more of the convalescents—some only 
lately admitted to the Porch Club and showing it, 
too, with their charley-horse dance for a two-step!— 
and he fought off the Captain, to and fro in the Box, 
again and again from the door to the rail, where 
the struggle grew mad, ’till they leaned far, far 
over, on the brink of falling —were falling on the 

heads of the dancers- 

A servant, in green livery, bobbed up from the 
prompter’s-box, well down to the footlights, and 
announced, resoundingly: 

“Supper now being served in the-” 

“It’s been waiting some time, sir.” Miss New- 
lands is saying. “But you were dozing so comfo^- 
ably I didn’t like to wake you.” 

Cartell saw the tray hazily, but clearly that Miss 
Newlands now wore the green silk sweater on which 
Miss Savile had been working so long. 




256 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“I suppose by now, sir, our young ladies are hav¬ 
ing the time of their life.” 

“Yes,” said Cartell, “I saw them.” 

Miss Newlands made no comment on this ob¬ 
viously feverish statement. She never did, in such 
cases: probably, some stubborn atom of ether, lurk¬ 
ing in a brain-cell. She believed it was better to 
let them rave on in peace, if they enjoyed it. But 
she took his temperature. 

“Up?” he asked. 

“No, sir. I thought, possibly, you’d been over¬ 
doing it today—what with the Graduation and 
everything and taken some cold. When I came in 
you were sniffling a bit.” 

(‘Nothing escapes her!—Telepathic!’)—“Have 
you ever noticed. Miss Newlands, that a long ill¬ 
ness leaves one sort of—^maudlin?” 

“Naturally, sir.” 

“You might almost say, ‘mushy.’ ” 

“Why, of course, sir. The mind gets soft, same 
as the muscles, and the brain-cells seem to be the 
last to renew themselves. We all expect the patient 
to drool a bit. Some nurses believe in encouraging 
the convalescent along those lines—as a sort of men¬ 
tal exercise.” 

“Sounds reasonable.” 

“O, it’s all right, if it isn’t overdone. I’ve seen 
cases where the reaction was rather troublesome. 
But it doesn t last long—in my experience.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


257 

“How long usually?” His query was anxious, al¬ 
most complaining. 

“That depends, sir, on the extent of the—de¬ 
lusion. One hears, of course, of really desperate 
cases, with serious complications.” 

“What’s the approved treatment in such cases?” 

“That’s left entirely to the patient, sir. That’s 
where the mental-exercise comes in.” 

Great mind. Miss NewlandsI 


CHAPTER XXIV 


A PHRASE THAT LOST A PULPIT AND 

WON A WING 


HE courtship of Abner Huggins was swift 



X and facile enough; but not the marriage. 
Three clergymen—militant against divorce—re¬ 
fused to make the Contessa Bianchi plain Mrs. 
Huggins. There was always Elkton, of course, and 
not far away; but the Contessa declined that as “too 
elopish and kiddish.” 

“Why not your brother?” she suggested. 

“Impossible! Michael’s never done it with a 
divorced party.” 

“But this is all in the family,” she argued. “Let 
me talk to him.” 

“No use. He’s recently had one run-in with the 
Governors—” Abner habitually thought in terms 
of Wall Street—“and just escaped being scratched 
off the list. However, I’ll make a bid-” 

“No, no, let me, Huggums. I’m rather bullish 
on your brother Mike.” 

Only a little while ago Michael Huggins had 
missed, by the hair’s-breadth of a phrase, a pulpit 



THE CONVALESCENTS 259 

in a great city and a congregation of wealth and 
fashion. Yes, opportunity knocked at his door, on 
Easter Sunday, and led him, for a try-out, to St. 
Edmund’s-in-the-Square. 

His wife had outlined his sermon—and filled It 
in, largely—all the while she filled his grip-sack 
for the journey to the Wicked City and the wicked 
congregation. She just knew what they needed 
most—plain talk about the Seventh Commandment 
and Divorce. High time Michael put a stop to 
their goings-on. He had always taken high ground 
on divorce; now let fly his oriflammel He’d do his 
best, he promised—with reservations. And he was 
glad of that loop-hole, the instant he faced his audi¬ 
ence. 

He wished, devoutly, that he had thought out 
another theme. The Seventh Commandment was 
not for these pillars of society—exquisitely turned 
in every part—base, column and capital;—the 
women’s hats—‘why didn’t Mrs. Mike ever wear 
that sort?’—and the trim heads of the men—he 
wished he’d had a city hair-cut!—and he wished his 
clothes were better fitting, and that he could be sure 
—sure as salvation—that his neck-tie wouldn’t climb 
up over his collar at the back. It always did when 
he got warmed up. 

“For my sermon, this morning, dear people”—^he 
wondered that he could be so familiar—“I turn to 
the Seventh”—he imagined a sigh of boredom 
throughout the assemblage while he kept on turning 


26 o 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


—“to the seventh—er—verse, sixteenth chapter, of 
Corinthians: ‘I trust to tarry a while with you, if 
the Lord permit,’—and”—still turning—“to Job: 
21 St chapter: 3rd verse—‘Suffer me that I may 
speak: and after that I have spoken, mock on.’ ” 

He couldn’t restrain a smile at his narrow squeak 
from an ugly predicament; and the audience, though 
mistaking his mind, shared the amusement. The 
man had wit, and precise articulation: rather Eng¬ 
lish. As for the rest—an Avenue tailor could easily 
correct that. 

Feeling their favor, he warmed to his subject; 
not hotly, but with a cosy glow. He had himself 
well in hand: knew the mood of his hearers. ‘Easter 
Sunday,’ he kept telling himself—‘not Billy Sunday.’ 
And soon his frigid audience was melting under his 
humour and good-nature. . . . Yes, this man might 
tarry a while. 

Then the imps of mischance let loose a spider, on 
the back of Michael’s neck—or was It a beetle—big, 
black?—No, worse—Michael’s neck-tie. He saw 
It out the corner of his eye—felt it climbing up over 
his collar—up, up Into the air. It seemed to him— 
and all his gentleness with It. Rebel thoughts surged 
In—fierce, anarchic rage against his fractious, 
frazzled, collar-climbing neck-tie, his country- 
barber hair-cut, his frayed shirt-cuff, and all such 
works of poverty. Then, by some quirk of mind, he 
thought of Abner—the Grand Mogul—In the hos¬ 
pital—sticking to his room that others needed sorely 


THE CONVALESCENTS 261 

—gourmandizing on chops and Lyonnaise potatoes 
and orange-juice that might better go to the public 
ward. What with the hospital on top of Abner, and 
Abner on top of the neck-tie, and the neck-tie on 
top of the collar—he lost sight of his actual audi¬ 
ence. He saw only Abners. Every man, in every 
pew looked just like Abner: was Abner. And he 
found himself talking business to Abner. “All very 
well to be diligent in business,” he was saying quite 
calmly now; such a man ‘shall stand before kings.’ 
. . . Some of you, I believe, have actually done so: 
stood before kings as familiars. Loaned them 
money. Made them gifts of yachts and stallions and 
tips on stocks and jewels for their good ladies. And 
from standing before kings you came to sit down 
with them, at feasts of precious—chops and price¬ 
less—potatoes and Johannisberger and—and— 
orange-wine—all of which”—confound that neck¬ 
tie !—“might better go to the public ward.” From 
which he stepped, naturally, into the realm of the 
King of Kings, before Whom they must some day 
stand. “What matter, then, to have been diligent in 
business, if they have neglected His—thinking only 
of their own guts and gold?” 

The fat was in the fire! Michael sensed the 
sizzle—especially in the choir-loft—throughout the 
Recessional. His hopes went up in the smoke of a 
sermon that was roasted to a turn. 

He had his Easter dinner with a mighty personage 


262 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


—who afterwards personally conducted him—a 
token of supreme favor—through his famous art- 
galleries. And so pleased was he by Michael’s 
sapient appreciation of Pat Sheedy’s Duchess of 
Devonshire, by Gainsborough, and Sassoferrato’s 
blonde Madonna, that he did his best—and there 
was little in the world his best couldn’t accomplish 
—to have him made Rector of St. Edmund’s-in-the- 
Square. But, for once, the vestry outvoted him- 
After Michael’s ‘guts and gold!’ “No, we’re not 
having any today, thank you kindly.” 

And yet, somehow, that sermon remained a jovial 
memory with the mighty personage. More than 
once, he repainted the scene for his cronies over 
their kneipe-bouts of fabulous Johannisberger, with 
high-lights on the flabbergasted aspect of the front 
pews. 

With Michael, too, that Easter Sunday remained 
always a precious memory. He had many a paunch¬ 
shaking chuckle over that sermon—for which he 
hoped the Lord would forgive him! He knew his 
wife wouldn’t. 


The Contessa had her talk with Michael and her 
way with him. 

He accepted the responsibility with a chuckle. 
Though his wife predicted a rebuke from the Bishop 
and a five-dollar fee from Abner. 

“I should refuse it,” Michael promised. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 263 

“I should hope you would I You seem to remem¬ 
ber everything in the Bible—book, chapter and verse 
—except that the-” 

Her husband turned on her sharply, with hand 
raised in protest. 

“Well, then,” she twittered, “Luke: 10:7—since 
you don’t like the words themselves.”. . . 

It was a June wedding—on the day following the 
graduation of the student-nurses. So that the Con- 
tessa could have for bride’s-maids Miss Trenholm 
and Miss Conde—her nurse and Mr. Huggins’s. 
She wanted it to be, in so far as possible, a novelty: 
something she’d never had before—“a hospital wed¬ 
ding.” She would have liked them to wear their 
blue gingham uniforms; but Miss Beaux put her 
foot down on that. So the Contessa sent them, for 
the occasion, gowns of cerule crepe-de-chine, quite 
after the fashion of the uniform but with its severity 
glorified by the smartest of modistes. The nurse’s- 
cap was tricked into a rakish toque; and for their 
only jewelry they had bar and cuff pins of Etruscan 
gold—the bride’s gifts. The Contessa planned the 
wedding-breakfast to be a garden-party continuing 
throughout the day, with a Marimba band for danc¬ 
ing under a blue-striped marquis-tent and a vaude¬ 
ville-show at night—all in the sandy yard below the 
Porch where she and Mr. Huggins had first met. 
Thus she planned to give the Graduation **une cachet 
touUa-fait jolieJ^ 



264 the convalescents 

Miss Beaux put her foot down on that, also. ‘En¬ 
tirely too jolly—for a hospital.’ 

After the curt rites, the bride-groom, drawing a 
check-wallet from his Inside coat-pocket, asked 
brusquely: 

“What’s the charge, Michael?” 

Michael shook his head, mumbling faintly: 
“Nonsense I” 

“‘Nonsense,’ yourself, man! ‘The laborer Is 
worthy of his hire.’ Your Bible says that.” 

“So my wife tells me,” the clergyman laughed. 

“Well, then, give it to her—for a new hat, or— 
ukulele I” 

Michael declined, decisively. 

“But you’re entitled to something. I’ll leave It 
to the”—he turned to Miss Conde from habit, 
but completed—“to Mrs. Huggins.” 

“It Is something”—Michael said—“more than 
enough—to see you happy.” 

Take care, M^Ichael, or you’ll be sprouting 
wings.” 

“Don’t need them, Abner, but the hospital does, 

one wing, at least. Send them that check—for 
the marriage-fee.” And he brought pen and Ink. 

“Well—I’m new at this sort of thing.—How 
much?” 

Michael, bowing, referred him for answer to the 
bride. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 265 

“What’s usual,” Huggins asked her, “in these 
cases?” 

“This isn’t a usual case, is it?” she parried. 

“Perhaps not. What’ll I make it?” 

“Whatever you think I’m worth, mon cher amiy 

“Good lord, madame, do you want to bankrupt 
me?” 

“Not before the honeymoon.” 

The way she said it—threat or promise? Abner 
wasn’t certain—caused him to drop the poising pen. 
“Yes, yes. I’ll send the check afterwards. The hos¬ 
pital can wait a month—if that’s the usual length 
of the honeymoon?” 

“That’s up to you, old top.” 

Abner grimaced at the familiarity. 

Michael chuckled. 

The bride told him —*le man'i al petto ^—how 
deeply she’d been moved by his admonitions: ‘never 
before had she felt so thoroughly and irrevocably 
married’: 

“Maybe it’s because you’ve read so much Dante, 
but, you know, you’re not the least like a regular 
clergyman.” 

“My vestry, alas! says the same.—And my wife, 
too.—Sometimes I doubt that I was really ‘called.’ ” 

“Well, you deserve to be called—all sorts of nice 
things. We’re going to get on famously. I can 
never repay that Hospital for Abner’s brother. 
And—I’ll see your wife changes her hat-shop.” 

Later, when he kissed the bride good-bye, he whis- 


266 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


pered: “Abner’s check to the Hospital—don’t let 
him forget it, after the honey-moon.” 

**Prendo subito, amigoP 

Michael laughed outright: “That’s much nicer, 
isn’t it, than our ‘I get you, Steve.’—And see that 
he’s generous.” 

“What amount?” she asked. 

“That’s up to you,” he quoted. 


In the diversions and distractions of the Springs, 
Mr. Huggins must have lost track of time, by a 
fortnight or so. The honey-moon lacked quite that 
of the full when a letter reached Miss Beaux: 

Dear Madam: 

Since forcing my way out of your establishment—^where 
you all insisted on keeping me several days longer than was 
necessary—I recall that you or the doctors or, possibly, 
some of the nurses rather intimated once or twice that 
your Hospital needed more rooms. Out of the enclosed 
certified cheque—No. 8973—you can, perhaps, squeeze a 
few and also some orange-juice. 

Respectfully yours— 

Abner Huggins. 

Miss Beaux looked at the check and gasped: 

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars —and 
seven cents I” 

A postscript said: 

“The seven cents is for taking me to the railroad- 
station. Your ambulance-man wouldn’t accept ;t. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 267 

He may have the makings of a good doctor, but 
he’s a mighty bad business-man.” 

Across all this ran an angular scrawl—“Not bad 
for Muskogee I” 

That day brought joy to the Hospital, and a new 
catch-phrase—almost as useful and frequent as 
‘attractive’:— 

“We all love Abner.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


FOUR THOUSAND MILES BY TAXI 

I N the Swiss Alps Cartell found, gradually, new 
zest of life. He had come here, straight from 
the Hospital, by way of the Tangu carpet. 

The place in all its soothing circumstance was 
“indicated” for convalescence. Pines, fir and spruce 
gave their anodyne to the air; magnolias and locusts 
their drowsy perfume. In the valleys below a slum¬ 
brous landscape spread a crazy-quilt of emerald pas¬ 
tures, russet fields, tawny meadows and pastel 
orchards. A shallow brook loafed down the moun¬ 
tain-side, sinuous and soundless save when it 
stubbed its toe ’gainst snag or cobble. Far off, at 
the horizon’s edge, the topaz waters of the saline 
bay blinked sleepily in the sun. 

No sound broke the stillness of the scene, except 
occasionally the faint love-call of quail or the cat¬ 
bird’s tender mew. 

The Night brought, of course, intenser quiet; 
brought, too, the poignant melancholy that seizes 
the spirits of the sick when the moon puts on the 
grinning mask of Momus and the stars flaunt their 
eternal youth. 


268 


THE CONVALESCENTS 269 

And It brought, too, ’bout nine o’clock, a Marimba 
band from Nicaragua and one of Jazz from the 
Barbary Coast. In their train there came, from the 
neighboring chalets and from the villas of the city 
twinkling In the distance, dozens, scores and hun¬ 
dreds of dancers. 

Then, till nearly midnight, there was hell-to-pay; 
rosy, care-free, merry hell! 

All these adjuvants of rejuvenescence assembled 
here, on this solitary Alpine-top, In easy liaison with 
the Hospital. Twenty minutes by taxi; thirty by 
trolley-car. And scarcely a night that one or more 
of the younger physicians couldn’t be summoned 
from the ball-room, in a sudden emergency. Even 
a nurse, in a tragic crisis. But for nothing less, 
disturb their diversion! 

Saving their presence—which any decent convales¬ 
cent will fail to observe—the Illusion lacked nothing 
of Switzerland—In the region of Wengen, say,— 
except, perhaps, the Jungfrau. If the good of the 
convalescents had required an Ice-capped mountain, 
It would have been there; at least a baby Jungfrau. 
The Magics of the B. M. H. wouldn’t stop at a little* 
thing like that. 

The back-wash of the War, some said, had landed 
Schwartz, the maitre-d’hotel, on this mountain-top. 
He had learned his metier at the Danlelo In Venice, 
the Mediterranee at Nice, the Piccadilly In London, 
Sacher’s in Vienna. The presence of this cosmo- 


270 THE CONVALESCENTS 

politan Swiss, here, at this trolley-end tavern to 
which he brought the Intimate quality of foreign 
hotels, was for Cartell merely another manifesta¬ 
tion of Magic—until they let the jazz loose. 

It consoled Schwartz to think of the Tavern as 
an annex to the B. M. H.—a sort of “after-cure” 
In the continental fashion. He took more joy in 
the arrival of one, poor, sick sheep from the Hos¬ 
pital than In the advent of a family-flock of richest 
fleece. . . . He tempered the wind to the shorn 
lambs by setting apart for them the sunniest veran¬ 
dahs. When Miss Ledyard fancied the one small 
suite with Its private balcony, the present occupants 
were requested to vacate:—“A mistake—most re¬ 
grettable—In the reservation.” For the Contessa 
Blanchl’s brief sojourn he screened a corner of the 
terrace with boxed geraniums, live palms and dwarf 
orange-trees. There, on a Pompeian bench, laid 
thick with Oriental rugs and shaded by a crimson 
lawn-umbrella, she might easily imagine herself con¬ 
valescing on the Riviera. . . . The salle-a-manger 
offered especial diet-menus: some following the 
regimen of Miss Newlands and Dr. Abernethy; 
some bolder, but still approved by the Hospital 
faculty. 

At night, when the jazz began to rage, a gentle¬ 
woman of broken fortune but unbending discipline 
chaperoned the ball-room while Schwartz moved 
among the convalescents bidding them—In familiar 
phrase:—“Be brave!—Will soon be over!—To- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 271 

night is worse than usual.—They have high tempera¬ 
ture—the dancers. But Dr. Kreweson—he Is there, 
in the ball-room—and Dr. Tantrec—they say It is 
good for you—all this excitement and desolation.— 
May be!—The good God Is mysterious.’’ 

Miss Savlle Cartell had seen but once since leav¬ 
ing the Hospital. Then only by chance of her ac¬ 
companying Miss Beauclerc on a visit to her recent 
patient, Miss Ledyard. 

Both nurses were in a flurry of gayety. The 
dreaded examinations were over. They would not 
know, for several weeks, the result of the ordeal. 
—‘And you never could tell about those cranks on 
the State Board!’—But there was a comforting 
rumour that the hospitals had advised them to con¬ 
sider the awkward paucity of nurses—and be rea¬ 
sonable. 

They were starting, the next day, on long-planned 
vacations: Miss Beauclerc sure that she wouldn’t 
look at a case until the Fall—no matter how attrac¬ 
tive—and Sandra vowing she wouldn’t so much as 
look at a thermometer for three months—not even 
to see the condition of the weather.—In two weeks 
both were back at the Hospital. 

From Margot came letters, of crescent infre- 
quence and solicitude: ‘Why on earth didn’t he 
hurry and get perfectly well I’—‘When was he going 
to be through with those dreadfully depressing doc¬ 
tors—and quite away from those frumpy nurses 1’— 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


272 

‘And why did he stick on at that funny hotel which 
she’d heard was no better than a sanitarium?’ . . . 
Some plans of her own, she concluded, waited on his 
complete recovery. 

Then, one day, a ’phone-call, unexpectedly, from 
the station: She’d just arrived—was coming out 
for luncheon—and a nice, long, talk and:—“My, 
it’s good to hear your voice again!” 

“I thought I’d worked this all out on the train, 
but now I’m here it isn’t so darn easy as it looked.” 

‘^Can’t I help you?” Cartell offered. 

“I don’t know.—It’s a—a—rather naughty 
story.” 

“Won’t it keep till luncheon?—We’ll be quite by 
ourselves, there, on the lawn.” 

“No! Let’s have it out before.—That table, 
under the trees, looks very pretty—and we might 
get to throwing things if they’re too handy.” 

He engaged to refrain. 

“Do I really have to tell it?” 

He shook his head; he’d tell it for her, if she 
liked: enough, at least, to show whether he’d guessed 
the end correctly. 

“That’s a help—I’ll inform the press!”—The 
phrase marked her return to normal.—“And poor 
me lying awake o’ nights trying to figure put the 
awful problem.” 

“Sort that solves itself,” he said: “taken out of 
our hands.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 273 

“Yes, of course. But I was afraid, maybe— 
you’ve not been worrying over it—seriously?” 

Yes, somewhat—on her account. He knew, of 
course, how she would dread and hesitate—though 
the only course possible, under the circumstances: 
inevitable. He told her why—many reasons, to 
each of which she nodded sympathy and for the 
best, thanks, with a press of the hand. 

“Mother said you’d see it that way—and that 
father was all wrong.—He said a girl who’d do that 
sort of thing isn’t worth hell-room.” 

Even so, Cartell promised, any man would jump 
to share it with her. 

The warmth of the compliment mellowed her 
mood. 

“But there isn’t anyone else”—she protested—“I 
want you to believe that. And there isn’t going to 
be—at present. But you’ve made me terribly un- 
happy—being so sensible about it. I think I’d kiss 
you—only there’s the waiter, thank heaven—’cause 
I’m. frightfully hungry.” 

Margot marvelled at the splendid isolation of 
the Inn. Likened it to a roof-garden. Wondered 
could you see the noisy, smoky town beyond the 
trees, or even the public road beneath. She walked 
to the edge of the terrace and a few steps below, 
returning with an armful of Black-eyed Susans that 
ran wild and irrepressible as the girl herself. 

In her absence, Schwartz crossed the lawn to 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


274 

ask: “Is everything right?—The menu sufficiently 
—attractive?” 

“Quite perfect, yes.” 

“And”—^with admiring smile—“the charming 
lady is, of course, your wife?”—Schwartz advised 
rather than asked.—“No?—^Ah—ah—that is too 
bad—desolating!—such a beautiful day.—She is 
most attractive”—reflecting, again, the pervasive in¬ 
fluence of the Hospital and the foreign amenities. 

The girl was at her best, throughout the luncheon. 
Cartell could hardly remember her so amiable, 
gracious, charming as she was today. Like all 
healthy, happy young women she ate amazingly well, 
and could maintain all her fascinations while doing 
it.—Byron said that was beyond any woman—and, 
so, left his wife. Margot, today, would have won 
him. Bantered delightfully with every sip of the 
bisque: uttered exquisite sentiments of tender affec¬ 
tion between bites of the tender filet: put teasing 
badinage twixt the leaves of an artichoke—and re¬ 
nounced her fiance, with passionate regret, over the 
last spoon of the ice-cream. 

No, no, she wouldn’t hear of his walking down 
the mountain with her, to see her aboard the trolley- 
car.—The return-climb—she was sweetly solicitous 
for him.—Besides, ‘she always wanted to remember 
him just as she saw him now—’way up here—in this 
scene of peace and quiet, where he was sure to get 
well—some day.’ 


THE CONVALESCENTS 275 

When he leaned to kiss her, she turned quickly 
away:—“No, dear boy, that’s over I”—The type is 
sincere, O Postumus!—La porte est ouverte ou 
fermee I 

She hurried from him—almost ran—down the 
hill—looking back at the sharp turn of the drive to 
make sure he wasn’t following, at peril of his scant 
strength. Then, scurrying through a side-path to a 
point of the tree-bowered road hidden from view 
above, she hopped into the waiting limousine. 

“I rather wish you hadn’t come!” 

“He couldn’t see me, from up there.” 

“No; but I don’t believe I like lying—when it 
isn’t necessary.” 

“But it was necessary, under the circumstances— 
or, at least, kind.” 

“O, yes, he’s still shaky, of course, and his voice 
did tremble horribly—when he said ‘good-bye.’ But 
he had evidently thought it all out calmly and braced 
himself for a game finish. At times we were quite 
jolly. He had ordered a delightful luncheon. Just 
the things I like. The waiter always disappeared 
until wanted, and, in the tavern, the best Marimba 
band I ever heard played my pet tunes: So it 
wasn’t so trying, after all.” 

“GoodI How did he take it?” 

“I don’t know,” she laughed: “he beat me to it— 
in a way.” 

“How?” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


276 

“Told me he realized it couldn’t be: that it was 
all off.” 

“On account of me, I suppose?” 

She shook her head: “No! Never mentioned 
you.” 

“But what did he say?” 

“Pretty much what I had planned to say to him.” 

“And left It to you to decide, of course?” 

“O, yes—just as I meant to leave him to decide. 
But he gave me several good reasons why I should 
decide not to marry him. Chiefly, that his future 
was too insecure—uncertain: the future of his work, 
his health, his money-affairs, his life even. He has 
a chance, the doctor told him; but he couldn’t allow 
me to sacrifice myself for a mere chance. Wasn’t 
that fine of him?” 

“Rather, yes. But It was only the decent thing 
to do, wasn’t it?” 

“I suppose so. Still I didn’t think I’d get out 
of It so—gracefully.” 

He asked, of course, the “Indicated” question. 

“What of It—seeing the number of times I’ve 
done It before ! As a matter of fact, never occurred 
to me.—^And you wouldn’t ask If you’d seen him— 
with that well-known ‘hospital-look.’—If you ever 
get like that—promise me, Jerry—^you’ll go away 
off somewhere where I can’t see it.” 

A little further on, half way back to town, they 
crossed a jitney. Jerome bowed to the one pas¬ 
senger. 


THE CONVALESCENTS 277 

“Who was that?” 

“That nurse of his, Miss Savile.” 

“Do you suppose she’s going out to see him?” 

“Quite likely.” 

“And will tell him, of course, that she saw us I” 

“Well, what of it?” 

“Nothing—except that”—and she didn’t go on. 

“Well?” he prompted her. 

“O, it’s something that Mrs. ‘Tony’ told me about 
—hyenas—and, somehow, it hurts,” she added 
huskily. 

He pressed her hand, reassuringly. 

“Yes, Mister Man, you’ll have to be awfully good 
to me. I’ve done a rotten thing on your account. 
... You know, I almost wish- 

“Well?” 

“O, I was only thinking that he might fall in love 
with that nurse—^but that would be too absurd, 
wouldn’t it, after what I meant to him—and the 
wonderful days we’ve had together.” 

“I seem to recall you’re saying, once or twice, 
that you had ‘never really loved him.’ ” 

“Did I?”—in surprise: “When?” 

“On one occasion in the hospital, first time you 
took me there.” 

“What an uncomfortable memory you have I Still 
it was true enough.—I never did love that grisly 
shadow of a man we saw stretched out on a horrible 
iron bed. And I couldn’t think of him as ever hav¬ 
ing been the man I knew. I had much that same 



278 THE CONVALESCENTS 

feeling today all the while I was with him. . . . 
IVe always hated sickness—and death, and such 
things. My chow, Pirn,—I can’t stand him around 
me when he’s ailing. Some women pet and hug a 
sick dog as though it were a child. I loathe the 
little beast.—^And I feel the same about a man 
sick and weak and helpless.—Most women do—if 
they’re quite normal. That’s why I can’t understand 
these nurses, and their coming to care, now and 
then, for a patient. Ugh! ... So now you know 
what’s expected of you.” And she tapped his hand, 
pettingly. 

“You still have his ring.”—He blundered again. 

“Of course, Cartell wouldn’t take it back,” she 
explained. “Besides, it’s only some queer, old opal 
—no value.—^And Pve always loved the setting.” 

“But you won’t wear it?” 

“Of course not—as a ring.” She took it off.— 
“Pll have it changed—a lavalliere or something.” 

“But, my Jear girl- 

“Now drop the matter, please, or Pll jump out 
the car”—and she seized the door-handle. “All this 
fuss over a penny ring—and a man who looks like 
—I wish I hadn’t seen him today—and you never I” 

“If you regret it too keenly, you’d best-” 

“O, shut up!” 

And he did—for the rest of the long ride back 
to town; and, later too, at dinner, he was thought¬ 
fully silent; and then throughout the play that they 
both went to see in order to get away from each 
other. 




CHAPTER XXVI 


THE END OF THE WORLD 

U NTIL Margot had quite disappeared at the 
bend of the road, and for some moments 
after, Cartell loitered on the hill-top. For a last 
possible glimpse of her? Or even the faint hope 
that she might turn back? 

As he turned away, a pluck at the sleeve halted 
him, and a croaking voice: 

“Ah? What did I tell you—that day on the 
Porch ?” 

“Done for, you said. Would never get out. And 
here I am—well!” 

“Who says so?” 

“The doctors—Hampden, Fenway, Harley, Tan- 
tree. All of them.” 

“Kidding you 1 They needed the room.—She 
knows better—that vivid, vital, self-sufficing crea¬ 
ture you watched run down the hill—out of your 
life.” 

“How should she know?” 

“How do they always know—everything—that 
goes to the quick of life?—Youth, gaiety, hot blood, 
bobbed hair-” 


279 



28 o 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“Be off, Gribbles!—You’re crazy.” 

But he kept at Cartell’s heels; played on fears till 
now quite stilled; dinned into Margot’s going a 
significance sinister and fateful. 

Cartell, his eyes riveted on the sward at his feet, 
saw each blade of grass transform to a tiny blue- 
devil: troops and battalions of them, hands joined^ 
circled about him, grinning, dancing, cavorting in 
snap-the-whip, swing-the-cat, dead-man’s-double, 
until- 

“Stop thinking, sir!” 

Sandra may not have recognized certainly the 
occupant of the passing car. Or seen only Jerome, 
and overlooked his companion. Or she may have 
forgotten the incident in the excitement of a mo¬ 
mentous turn in her own affairs. In any event, she 
omitted mention to Cartell of having glimpsed his 
recent caller on her way to the Tavern. 

She went at once to the purpose of her visit, as 
if to explain her coming unattended. 

“There’s something you should know now that 
you’re out-of-the-woods.” 

“Quite out?” 

“Why, of course. Or I shouldn’t be making this 
—confession.” 

“Gribbles?” 

The nurse ruffled at the promptness of the guess; 
piqued and surprised by this proof of faulty tech¬ 
nique. The professional’s amour-propre was hurt 



28 i 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

—and pouted. At such a moment, doubtless, For¬ 
rester had caught the likeness to “La Cruche 
Cassee.” 

“And you knew from the first?” she demanded. 
“No, but suspected.” 

“Miss Newlands thought you did. Still, it’s the 
only thing to do in such a case.” 

“Dangerous, isn’t it?” 

“Not if it’s done well.” 

“You did it perfectly.” 

“I tried my best, desperately.” 

“Makes it all the worse! Can’t you see how the 
patient impressible, susceptible, self-centred by isola¬ 
tion, might misconstrue such sacrifice of veracity in 
his behalf, the martyrdom of cherished ideals? 
There were times. Miss Savile—I don’t mind con¬ 
fessing—when I had to remind myself violently: 
‘Don’t be a fool!’ ” 

“O, yes, I saw that, sir, on several occasions. 

And I always put it on the chart-” 

“Suffering cats I Miss Sav-” 

“Not just in those words, of course.” 

“But your chart must read like a-” 

“Yes, sir. It’s supposed to. We omit nothing. 
And the doctors regard that as a particularly sig¬ 
nificant symptom.” 

“What—getting foolish?” 

“Partly that, yes. But much more the patient 
struggling to conceal it. Shows the mental 
processes returning to normal.” 





282 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

He muttered, under his breath, something that 
seemed to please her: 

“Are you really annoyed, sir?” 

The look of him left no doubt. 

“That’s fine!” she encouraged. “Best symptom 
of all. You’ve quite come back. Just as though 
nothing had ever happened.” 

Whatever denial he longed to make her tone and 
manner forefended; they had, even more than her 
words, the finality of ‘discharged-as-cured.’ He 
realized clearly that it was meant for dismissal; 
and yet, loth to accept it, he asked as though merely 
seeking professional information: “Why the deuce 
did all that have to happen?” 

“You’ve answered yourself, sir. 'Had to hap¬ 
pen.’” Then, lest some hint of sentiment might 
lurk in the allusion she hurried him back to the hos¬ 
pital: “In our work we-all come to believe im¬ 
plicitly in Fate.” 

^ (‘Yes, and She wouldn’t miss this chance,’ he told 
himself. ‘She liked her little jokes at his expense.’) 

“Surely you don’t regret it, sir?” 

^ one shouldn t,” he supposed, “in view 

of the compensations. Still—shattered plans—a 
lost year—future rather rickety-” 

“Bosh! What does any one know of the future? 
-—And even so—why, sir, you’ve had the rarest pos¬ 
sible adventure. I once heard Dr. Hampden say 

that no man has had all of life until he has all but 
died.” 



THE CONVALESCENTS 283 

“Any one can have my share,” he muttered. 

“Not mine! It’s been a wonderful experience for 
me. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.” 

He glanced at her, eagerly. She had spoken so 
gravely that he dared wonder for an instant- 

“That sort of experience, sir, is ‘the makin’s’ of a 
nurse,” she added in lighter tone. 

He professed delight that it hadn’t all been 
wasted pains. 

“No indeed, sir,” she confirmed. “You were such 
a beautiful case for a beginner. Coming, too, just 
before those dreaded examinations for a license— 
most attractive! And everything went just right 
for my purpose, even to the case suddenly going 
all wrong, so there didn’t seem a ghost of a chance 
of a rally. A turn like that is so splendid for a 
nurse; she’s keyed taut, if she really likes her work. 
I learned a lot those days. Dr. Harley says. More, 
even, than if you hadn’t pulled through—as you 
can easily understand.” 

No, he couldn’t—easily. One conceives, off-hand, 
that some knowledge positive and unique must tran¬ 
spire from the other event. “And the nurse who 
really likes her work would naturally resent the 
frustration,” he thought. 

“Not at all, sir. It’s much nicer, more satisfying 
all around, when the patient wins out. Otherwise, 
the nurse is kept wondering whether she always 
did just the right thing at the right moment and 
why didn’t they try this, that, or something else. 



284 the convalescents 

. . . And best of all, sir, your holding on kept me, 
for weeks, under the notice of Doctors Fenway and 
Hampden. I must thank you for that!” 

He disclaimed the reward; the service, whatever 
its worth, had been quite involuntary: automatic. 

He had listened with mingled emotions to the 
warm-toned, cold-blooded, unabashed review of his 
unconscious contribution to the education of a nurse. 
Admirable, of course, in its professional zeal and 
detachment, but in its personal bearing—painfully 
disconcerting; like the ready snub of the Fahrenheit. 
Had she planned her speech with malice-prepense, 
to dispel any mad delusion- 

“And to think that I shouldn’t have had the 
case”—she recalled—“nor any other student-nurse 
—only for the accident to Miss Dalkeith!—Do you 
believe in Fate, sir?” 

“One must—after seeing how she fixed it ages 
ago that the one solitary graduate-nurse available 
at the moment should slip in a fox-trot and snap 
her metatarsus-” 

“Astragalus, more likely,” she corrected- 

“—and for no other purpose, apparently, than to 
finish off your training and ensure your license.” 

Her eyes twinkled at the note of petulant temper 
in this tribute to Destiny. 

“I didn’t mean just that, sir. Only you did seem 
inclined, at times, to exaggerate my int—services in 
the case. It’s a way with patients, a phase of con¬ 
valescence, to—to —concentrate on the nurse. Some 





THE CONVALESCENTS 285 

patients assume it as a privilege; a sort of perquisite. 
Others take it as an obligation. They appear to 
feel bound, by the amenities, to persuade the nurse, 
one way or another, that but for Her!—^We-all 
think it comes largely from reading those silly Hos¬ 
pital stories. . . . Of course, a nurse does like a 
patient to feel that she’s concerned about him— 
that’s part of the job—but she doesn’t want him to 
imagine that his life depended on her.—That’s what 
I had in mind—if I’ve made myself clear-” 

“Horribly, Miss Savile.” And any further 
avowals of gratitude he promised to reserve for 
Chance and her pump-shod envoy:—“Would a letter 
find Miss Dalkeith at the Hospital?” 

Yes, but only for a few days. She would be leav¬ 
ing B. M. H. in a week or so. “Going to take 
charge of a children’s-hospital at Huang-Chau.” 

“What county is that?” he quizzed. 

“Oh, that’s off in China, sir. ’Way up the Yangtse 
river. 

He frowned slightly, but made no comment. 

“Thank you, sir!” 

“I said nothing.” 

“That’s just it! Everyone else, when you say 
‘children’s-hospital—China,’ immediately asks: 
‘Why? Aren’t there enough children here that need 
looking after?’ Apparently, that didn’t occur to 
you.” 

“No, I was thinking rather—farewell fox-trots— 
in China!” 



286 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


“Yes, but think what a chance! And Dalkeith’s 
an ambitious kid. She’s giving up a lot for this— 
her people whom she’s fond of—delightful home— 
the jolliest set in the county that she’s always golfed 
and danced and hunted with, even after she took up 
nursing. Everything a girl could ask for.” 

“But not in love?” 

“Isn’t she, though? Head over heels! Her very 
first case, too.” 

“Yes, that’s usually the worst.” 

“iV«r5f«^-case, I mean—first one she had in the 
hospital. He was there only a month. But it hap¬ 
pened long before that—perfect crush!—almost at 
sight.” 

“That’s always the worst.” 

“He wanted to marry as soon as he got out, but 
Dal insisted on graduating and then a year of prac¬ 
tice.—Splendid chap, too. String of horses almost 
as good as Mr. Parr’s.” 

“And she takes China instead?” 

“No! She’ll take him and China, if he’ll go 
there.” 

“Why not?” 

“Afraid of the climate—not for himself, he says, 
but for his horses. And he wouldn’t go without 
them. She doesn’t blame him, either; understands 
his feelings perfectly:—best stable in the South. 
And I wouldn’t want him along. He’d probably fret 
himself into fever, and we’d have him on our 
hands.” 


287 


THE CONVALESCENTS 

** *We*d have him’-” 

She nodded ever so slightly. 

“But you’re not thinking of going?” 

“It’s very attractive.” 

“China—at its very worst, too?” 

“All the better, for our purpose. I might not 
learn here in five years what I’ll learn there in one.” 

‘ ‘Then—^y ou— are —going ?” 

“Yes, for one year.—I stipulated that, and 
they’ve agreed.” 

Once more the blades of grass reared up, in 
demon-revel—leering imps—every one a tiny 
Cribbles. 

“What do they say at the Hospital?” 

“Doctor Fenway thinks it’s fine. Though he’d 
rather we didn’t go; nurses are so scarce, just now.” 

“And Doctor Harley—what does he say?” 

“He’s away on vacation. I don’t know he’s heard 
of our going.” 

“He won*t hear—of your going. I’ll wager.” 

“What has he to do with it?” she laughed. 

“Your fiance ?” 

“Doctor Harley—my fiance?—I’d hate Miss 
Killarney to hear that! They’re going to marry in 
the Fall.” 

“And you’re not engaged to—any one?” 

“Not at this writing.” 

“The deuce you say! Since when?” 

“Since never—and forever! I’m never going to 



288 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


marry, sir. At least not for a long, long time. But 
where d’you get the notion ’bout Dr. Harley?” 

“Why—why—from-” he floundered awk¬ 

wardly, and finally owned he must have dreamed it 
—“Or feared it, Sandra”—spoken so faintly that 
easily she may not have heard, yet reached eagerly 
into her mesh-bag. 

“No, no,” he protested, “please don’t-” 

“What, sir?” 

“Thermometer.” 

“I’ve none with me,” she laughed. “You’re past 
need of that. I’m looking for—this card: my ad¬ 
dress in China.” 

He noted the detailed post-directions: seven or 
eight items. “That’s the end of the world you’re 
going to.” 

“Nonsense I” 

“That’s how it reads on the old maps—‘Finis 
Mundi.’ Take a mis-step there—in a,fox-trot—and 
you fall off into space.” 

She reminded him that to watch their step was 
part of their .training. And that their star would 
light the way. There is one, she told him, especially 
appointed to look out for nurses. It showed in the 
sky for the first time the very hour Florence Night¬ 
ingale reached Scutari, on the morrow of Balaklava. 

“And I won’t be long, sir. Only a year. That 
will pass very quickly.” 

Now, at this commonplace her voice may have 




THE CONVALESCENTS 289 

fallen to a softer note—though you or I wouldn’t 
have remarked it; nor any crack in the professional 
ice on which she had been skimming so serenely, 
cutting figure-eights all around him. He, though, 
chose, foolishly, to imagine a change—and dared 
the chance of it. 

“When the year has gone—and nothing hap¬ 
pened,” he said, “I’ll come to find you.” 

“Wouldn’t do you any good”—and added “sir” 
in crushing emphasis: “I mean,” she went on 
quickly, “we’d only cross on the way. For I’ll be 
coming back, as I’ve told you, in a year. And I’ll 
look you up, sir.” 

“Do, please,” he entreated. “And the belief that 
you will means much more than you imagine.” He 
meant it to sound casual, in key with her speech; 
but, discerning failure, he hastened to generalize: 
“One always hates to lose a pleasant acquaintance, 
even though accidental.—Don’t go quite out of my 
life when you leave here today.” 

“Indeed I won’t, sir. A nurse always keeps track 
of a case that’s been at all—interesting. And you’ve 
been more than that”—again that fancied note of 
grace In her voice and he leaned to grasp the promise 
of it—“you’ve been a—a revelation”—candour 
sparkled her eyes and flushed her cheek—“of what a 
wonderful thing Carrel-Dakin is! I shall always 
remember you for that, sir—not to mention Peru- 
vlan-balsam.” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 


290 

Now henceforth and forever after—It would seem 
to you and me—the man must hold his peace. Spin 
no more dreams of Sandra Savlle nor vex his soul 
with thought of her, except to name her In his 
prayers, thank God for what he had had of her 
presence and companionship, and invoke divine 
grace on the calling that made such favors part of 
the job. . . . 

“Carrel-Dakin—and Peruvian-balsam!” Noth¬ 
ing could be fairer than that—making clear as noon 
of June just how he figured to her: a lesson In anti¬ 
sepsis, a proof of the lenitive tolu of Salvador, a 
mile-stone—or mere sign-post—on her road to the 
Registry, and beyond to China. . . . No reason, 
now, for delusion, no excuse for folly; less indeed, 
far less, than that day on the Porch when self- 
derlslon and giggles from the diet-kitchen damned 
avowal at the very edge. . . . The zeal and patient 
sweetness of her service—they, of course, were rou¬ 
tine: none but wits quite gone would make them 
presuming-matter.—But, Suffering Cats! there’d 
been something else, 
mat?’ 

Why—er—er- 

‘Well— what?* 

At such a moment—always with sight of the girl 
or mere thought of her—his mind went to the state 
of that curious apple In the Sultan’s garden at 
Shiraz: “one side, honey; one side, rue.” Oddly 
enough, the better side was soft—“mushy,” Miss 



THE CONVALESCENTS 291 

Newland’s word; the bitter side, sound: straight¬ 
thinking. Now it was pinning him down to facts: 
‘Speak up—Peruvian-balsam!’ 

O, nothing to speak of—literally: nothing tan¬ 
gible or vocable—a look, a tone of voice—just the 

way she said ‘good-morning’- 

‘Pish!—Elocution.—Rosina Filippi’s system, or 
Everts’—’Mong the first things taught.’ 

Well—then—sometimes, a glance—caught un¬ 
awares—wandering over the top of Dixon’s Phar¬ 
macology or Friedenwald’s Dietetics. 

‘Memorizing—imbecile!’ 

Or, best of all, a smile, sudden and reasonless, 
half-confession, half-question—strangely content 

and madly contenting- 

‘Lord!—^And they let you out! . . . Bet she 
doesn’t know your first name!’ 

But always—until today—some show of personal 
feeling—of intimate, fond concern—evinced in 

ways to charm and fascinate- 

‘Play-acting—half-wit!—See Talapoff—chapter 
XIV: Comediennes. Acting the most convincing 
and illusive because unconscious, like that of a child 
or dumb-animal or unspoiled amateur. . . . That, 
or else craft exquisite, consummate, ensained in a 
difficult theatre. In either case, an impeccable plan, 
carried out with scientific precision; a system of psy¬ 
chotherapy based on woman’s pleasant inhumanity 
to man. Coquetry employed as a cardiac: the 
“jolly” of vernacular turned to elixir-vitae.—^Take 





THE CONVALESCENTS 


292 

your medicine—^Anti-sepsis I—and look pleasant; 
she’s waiting to go.’ 

“Pardon, Miss Savile—I’ve been trying to recall 

something I meant to- But, of course, I’ll see 

you again?” 

“Not likely, sir—until I get back—next year. 
Meanwhile, just be sensible. . . . The open-air— 
sea, preferably. . . . Plain food. . . . Not such 
black cigars. . . . Most of all, stop thinking— 
about hospitals, doctors or nurses—and write to me, 
Tom I” 

The surprise of it—“Tom!”—after all her case- 
hardened punctilio and chary “sirs,” denied breath 
for answer. One’s first name strikes strange after 
long hermitage from familiars in a hospital. No 
use-and-wont of it there. They lock it away with 
your cuff-links, scarf-pin, key-chain. The return of 
these mundane symbols is a station of ‘The Great 
Adventure. The nurse’s triumphal “There, sir!” 
on that occasion recurred to Cartell; and the perk 
and strut of his spirits at sight of them. So, now, 
with her startling address. 

“That is your name, isn’t it—Tom?” 

Mostly, when a woman does a thing like that, 
she means something: has in mind some snare, snub 
or surrender; but Sandra, whose ken compassed no 
artfulness, meant no more than to refresh her 
memory of the man’s name. . . . Even so, some¬ 
thing might have come of it; an outburst of emotion 
—or the like of it—that would sweep Sandra off her 



THE CONVALESCENTS 


293 

feet into some such scene as you have every right 
to expect, from precedent; or even swerve her from 
China into some such romance as Bodley Kricke 
imagined.—And, if this script falls unfinished to the 
posthumous collaborateur with whom he had threat¬ 
ened Cartell—that will come of it. 

Instead there comes, now, only Schwartz, in a 
hurry, to tell Miss Savile she is wanted at the 
’phone. 

“You will have, maybe, company for dinner?” 
Schwartz—as once before today—was advising 
rather than asking. ^ 

“No!” 

“A—ah I—Excruciating—in such a weather—to 
dine alone!” 

His sympathy deserved explanation: 

“Miss Savile is going on emergency-duty—and 
later to China.” 

So Schwartz had heard—from the Hospital. He 
declared it: 

“Desolating I” 

Cartell differed, rather sharply: 

“It’s—divine!” 

“Yes, but . . . she dances-” He blew a kiss 

to the skies, leaped into the air after it . . . “like 
that!—But you have seen her-?” 

Like that, never I But he’d been told of her danc¬ 
ing: “Angelic!” 





294 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“The right word—per—feet—ly. . . . And it is 
wrong I’’ 

“But—^why-?” 

“To put wings on the shoulders and wings in the 
heart . . . and then, to put wings, also, on the little 

feet-!” Words failed the incongruity. . . . 

“It is from Heaven, maybe, but still ... a mis¬ 
take.” 

The nurse rejoined them looking grave, preoccu¬ 
pied. To Cartell’s inquiry, “Patient all right?” she 
stammered into the formula for such queries: 

“He’s—he’s much more comfortable, they 
’phoned.” 

Still, she couldn’t stay to dine, and she wouldn’t 
have a taxi called j there being no need to hurry she 
would walk back part way, along the drive, and take 
the trolley at the other side of the park. 

^ There was a more inviting route, Schwartz ad¬ 
vised Cartell; a mere trail skirting the creek, moss- 
carpeted, and mazing, with occasional solitudes, to 
the boulevard-entrance; just a pleasant jaunt ‘in such 
a weather’: two miles—three at most. 

“But that’s too long a walk back for Mr. Car¬ 
tell I” 

Schwartz was per—feet—ly sure they would find 
a cab there for the return-journey—“Unless, may¬ 
be”—to Cartell—“you decide to dine en-ville._ 

Yes?'—^The RooLGarden”—pointing the definite 
article. “Yes?” 




THE CONVALESCENTS 


295 

“No, no I” the nurse spoke up. “Mr. Cartel! 
mustn’t be out in the night air. You should know 
that, Mr. Schwartz.” 

“Ah, yes! I forgot. . . . Desolating!” 

He saw that they took the right path, with San¬ 
dra protesting “You mustn’t think of going all the 
way!” 

“Now, why must she be nurse?” he mused; “and 
why should he be invalid? . . . Still, the good God 
is mysterious. ... We will, anyway, ’phone to re¬ 
serve a table. . . . That little we can do for Him.” 

There was a cab, sure enough, at the end of the 
trail: a Black-and-White, but with the fare-signal 
up. 

“Engaged?” Cartell asked, and was asked in turn: 

“From Schwartz’s place?” A nod brought the 
chauffeur off the box, and opened the door: “Been 
here half an hour, but orders were to wait.” 

The nurse held her hand out to Cartell, and he 
helped her into the taxi- 

“But—how are you going to get back to the Tav- 
ern, sirr 

“I don’t mind,” he assured her, and got in. 

The cab whizzed townward. 

“But he doesn’t know where to take me!” 

“What difference—in such weather?” 



CHAPTER XXVII 


“WHEN GALLIARD-TIME AND 
MEASURE-TIME—” 

T hey went to dine on a roof-garden, the only 
one in the town, and always a hungry waiting- 
list in the ante-room. As they looked about, 
despairingly, the captain approached: “Mr. Car- 
tell?” 

“Yes.” 

“Your table is over here, sir, in the pergola. Mr. 
Schwartz reserved it by telephone.—I recognized 
his description”—identified by a glance of dazzled 
admiration toward Sandra and backing off as if from 
royalty. 

To Cartell, insensate to surprise after his months 
of magic, all this seemed matter-of-fact; but Sandra 
was quite bewildered. 

“You didn’t know we were coming here?” 

“Not when we started.” 

“Then how on earth did Mr. Schwartz-?” 

“Likes to think himself part of the Hospital, and 
acts accordingly.” 

Sandra shook her head, and sighed: 

296 



THE CONVALESCENTS 297 

“Too bad, isn’t it?” 

“What?” 

“That they all went mad—so the whole world 
has to hate them. . . . They are so efficient!” 

Yes, and Schwartz, he thought, might count for 
something in the reparations. 

She assented, “Yes, sir,” but so faintly and weakly 
that he said: 

“I hope the long walk through the Park didn’t 
tire you.” 

—startled by the sudden turn-about of 

affairs. 

“Is that chair quite comfortable?” he asked and, 
“Sure you’re not in a draught here?”—a mist, tinct 
with the sea, was blowing through the pergola. 

“No. But how about you, sir?” 

“This tile-floor is likely damp”—he had them 
fetch a foot-cushion for Miss Savile, and then, after 
dim.ming the electric-candle, he asked: “Too much 
light in your eye?” 

Unconsciously he was repeating the very questions 
of solicitude that for weeks she had put to him. 
Until, finally, she laughed: “You’d think, sir, it 
was my first night out.” 

Forthwith the waiter served the first course of a 
menu ordered apparently by magic, but, actually, 
by ’phone; complete throughout except for the 
sweet. That, of course, was the lady’s prerogative. 
. . . When the dinner reached that point, the ice 
was breaking up: melting, even. So that Sandra, 


298 THE CONVALESCENTS 

scanning the card, was asking cosily: “What shall 
we have for dessert?—and please don’t say ‘I don’t 
mind.’ ” 

“Well—then—whatever you say.” 

“I’m looking”—pensively—“for whatever’s most 
outlandish—something you never had while in the 
Hospital.” 

“Floating-Island!” he prompted. 

She flamed at the reminiscence, and hurried to de¬ 
cide : 

“That!” she told the waiter, indicating the item. 

Glibly and impassively he read off : 

“Poutinade-au-pain rassis-de-menage a la Mont¬ 
parnasse, avec sauce-de-liqueur Louisianienne.” 

“Sounds attractive,” Sandra thought; and 
brought on in a crystal swan guided with reins of 
smilax by a candy Cupid on a gleaming lake of 
Sheffield plate, dappled with pink water-lilies, it 
looked so.^ Sandra, evidently, had hit on the chef’s 
pet creation. ’ For nothing less, that imposing 
Mardi-Gras float. 

Apparently the sweet proved worth the parade; 
a mere taste of it evoked “Quite wonderful,” from 
Sandra. 

“Eveiything’s wonderful,” he echoed fervidly. 

“The sauce in particular,” she specified prosily, 
quite missing his intent or else mocking the senti¬ 
ment. And yet the words were vain against her 
gaze: questioning, wistful, sweetly troubled it went 
past him to the scene beyond. . . . There was danc- 


THE CONVALESCENTS 299 

ing now—^between the tables—to a band of strings 
whose soft melody cozened steps of acquiescent 
languor; the moon sieving through fleecy clouds 
powdered the garden with a silver mist and hazed 
the garish lamps to the softness of fire-flies. . . . 
A stillness foreign to the company and all the cir¬ 
cumstance tokened the enchantment. 

“I don’t believe I’ll ever forget this,” whispered 
Sandra, emerging from the spell. 

Tensely he began—“If I could be sure of 
that-” 

Her eyes, down-cast, avoided his. 

“You can make sure, if you 

“Try me!” he pleaded. “Put me to the test.” 

“I’m wondering if you could-?” 

“Yes, yes!” he prompted. “Anything!” 

“It’s only”—her glance still lowered—“the 
recipe for this dessert.—Think you might get it 
from the chef so I could take it to China?” 

“Oh!” He groaned it—without distracting her 
interest an iota from the pudding. 

“What did the waiter call it?” 

Cartell repeated the rigmarole, or as nearly as he 
could. 

“What does all that mean?” 

He couldn’t bring himself to tell her. They had 
left so far behind till now all circumstance of their 
earlier association. For the moment it had been In 
truth—for him—‘just as though nothing had ever 




300 THE CONVALESCENTS 

happened.’ And as if anything, conceivably, might 
happen. 

“Is it some untranslatable idiom?” she persisted, 
“a figure-0f-speech ?” 

That showed the way! “What day is this?” he 
asked—“this perfectly incredible day?” 

“Why—Tuesday, of course!—But what’s the day 
to do-?” 

The band was playing Varney’s False d^Oiseau, 
with “effects” ranging from peacocks to nightin¬ 
gales. Yet Sandra’s memory slept. Then a solitary 
bird, caged in the wistaria over-head, peeped, chirped 
and twittered. 

“Horrors!” she gasped. “Please don’t say that 
I ordered-” 

“H’m, h’m.” 

“And I meant everything this evening to be quite 
unusual!” 

Which imposed that he omit the usual. And yet 
he vowed: “I’ve never known an evening like this 
•—and never shall again.” 

Habit framed her lips to “Bosh!”—the indicated 
sedative—but turned instead to the substitute: 
“I’m afraid you’re talking too much, sir”—with a| 
look at her wrist-watch. 

My first real chance,” he said, “possibly my 
last.” Whereupon she buttoned her jacket and be¬ 
gan to put on her gloves with a care that seemed 
to call for her undivided attention. 

“You’re not listening.” 




THE CONVALESCENTS 301 

“Yes, sir.” 

“You know what’s in my mind to say?” 

“Let’s pretend I don’t—for the present, at least.” 

“Why ‘pretend’—what for?” 

“For variety,” she laughed. “Everything will be 
much more—attractive. . . . Do you mind?” 

“What a question!” he scoffed dismissingly, and 
then hurried to answer it at such protracted length 
and with such convincing detail that before he’d 
done she had one troubling glove on, and was start¬ 
ing the other. 

“Well, then, I—think—I know—yes, I’m sure I 
do. Or I wouldn’t have tried so hard this afternoon 
to keep you from saying it.” 

(So that was the game? Played, too, with the 
skill of an old hand, though scarcely out of blue- 
gingham. All in a day’s work, they will tell you: 
part of the training.) 

“Wasn’t very" nice, was it?” And as though that 
wasn’t contrition enough: “But I thought, of 
course, you’d see through it.” 

No, he owned, not till this moment. “And now” 
—he demanded—“what are you going to do about 
it?” 

“I’m going to think about it,” she answered with 
grave decision. 

“You’ll be leaving in a week,” he persisted. “Be¬ 
fore you go—-?” 

She shook her head: “When I return.” 

“A year—a dismal, hopeless, wasted year!” 



302 THE CONVALESCENTS 

“Yes, sir,” she assented, “and yet I’m quite de¬ 
termined.” 

“You won’t change your mind ?” 

“Perhaps you wouldn’t want me to, if you knew 
—but I mean for the year to make sure.” 

“Of yourself?” 

“Yes!” Her brisk candour was entrancing. 
“And for you, too.” 

“Good Lord, girl!” He laughed at the sugges¬ 
tion of uncertainty on his score. “I’m all in.” 

“You’ll have a year to get out, if you choose.” 

“If I can,^^ he corrected. “That’s what you mean, 
isn’t it?” 

She answered straight: 

“Yes, of course. And I expect you to try, at 
least. Want you to. I’d much rather you didn’t 
succeed”—her frankness shirked nothing now— 
“but I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. A year is 
ever so far off, in some things—and China even 
farther.” 

“Now—honor-bright,” he insisted, “as candidly 
as you just answered of yourself: You haven’t any 
doubt in my case?” 

“I—don’t—know.” Then, laughing: “I sup¬ 
pose I can’t have so very much doubt or I wouldn’t 
be leaving the case for a year.—Now we really must 
go-” 

He sought to detain her. “Just a moment— 
please-” 

“No! Time you got home, sir.” For an instant 




THE CONVALESCENTS 


303 

habit of authority resumed its sway. “You’ve 
talked quite enough for one day. . . . And, besides, 
Tom, we have still quite a ways to go.” 

The nightly tempest of fiddles, traps and saxo¬ 
phones had died out when Cartell made his way up 
to the Tavern an hour later; he had met the last of 
the dancers, straggling down the mountain-side, 
some arm-in-arm, some arms-about, against the 
dangers of the steep descent. On the level they 
might have been mis-viewed for petting-parties— 
and banished, henceforth, from the Tavern’s soirees. 
Schwartz held these, in a way, an element in the 
“after-cure” to which he dignified his hostelry, and 
he guarded their decorum as might Mrs. Comley- 
Draycott and her associates of the Hospital direc¬ 
torate. 

Cartell found him on the lawn in lively though 
whispered communion with the stars and his police- 
dog whom he addressed in his native language. He 
voiced relief at sight of Cartell: 

“Ah, I was getting uneasy. You are the last one 
out. I could not lock up until. . . .” 

“Thank you for waiting and for—everything!” 

“The dinner-?” 

“Perfect. Service, cuisine, menu—everything 
wonderful I” 

Schwartz made a move toward the door. 

“Leave me the key, if you don’t mind,” Cartell 
said, “I’ll sit here a bit longer.” 



304 THE CONVALESCENTS 

But you heard what that nurse said—^you 

shouldn’t be out—the night-air-” 

“It’s quite mild.” 

“Yes, but it is always a little—imperilling, the 
nurses think, by such a moon. Still, on the other 
hand”—giving him the door-key—“it is also, may 

be, a little . . . palpitating.—If that is the word, 
yes?’^ 

Just the word, thank you, Schwartz. Good 
night I” 



CHAPTER XXVIII 


DOCTOR HAMPDEN PUTS THE PER¬ 
SONAL NOTE IN A PROFESSIONAL 

RECORD 

T hey speed the going guest from B. M. H. 
with a puzzling caution: 

“Go easy—and go to work!” 

You’ve planned to:—Next month? 

“No ! You may be dead next month.” 

Next week, then ? 

“Just as uncertain as the other. Today! Now! 
You’re sure of that.” 

The scheme and spirit of the place swear at 
coddling. ‘The job’s done. Stop thinking about 
it!’ 


Dr. Hampden made a point, whenever prac¬ 
ticable, of “observing” his convalescents seemingly 
by mere chance. Easy enough at Sevenoaks Tav¬ 
ern where sojourned, always at this season, several 
of his hospital cases and many of his regular prac¬ 
tice. Today he was, apparently, about to re-enter 
his car, when he caught sight of Cartell, and crossing 
the lawn joined him. 


305 


3o6 the convalescents 

“What you doing here?” he asked in tone of sur¬ 
prise. 

“You sent me here, Doctor.” 

“Yes, but that was some time ago.” 

“I thought best, perhaps, to remain within reach 
of you—and the hospital.” 

“O, stop thinking of the hospital—and everything 
about it!—Of course, if you like this place-” 

“Immensely.” 

“Stay on, then. Agrees with you. See that. 
You’ve put on weight. Doing any work?” 

“Some.” 

“Some isn’t good enough.—Whoop it up! Keep 
at It! Don’t moon or mope. Get Interested In 
something—anything—thoroughly excited. Can if 
you try.” 

“I am now, Doctor,” he confessed rather sheep¬ 
ishly—“without half trying.” 

“Yes, of course! Forgot. Engaged—have It in 
the record of the case.” 

“Now, I’m afraid, you’ll have to take It out.” 

^ I see! Interesting! Happens now and 
then. In our work. Two kinds of women In the 
world, we find. Some care for sick men, some don’t. 
Either love to look after ’em, or—can’t see them at 
all. Some scheme of nature, evidently. Don’t know 
what her game is, but she generally knows her busi¬ 
ness.” 

“ ‘Natural selection?’ ” Cartell suggested. “Dar- 



THE CONVALESCENTS 307 

win’s idea? ‘Vae victis! Weak must go to the 
wall.’ ” 

“But seems you^re doing some selecting on your 
own account.—And before you got ill, were you 
liable to this sort of—flare?’’ 

“This isn’t a flare; it’s a conflagration.” 

“Fine! Most encouraging! When did you first 
notice the smoke? How long ago?” And out came 
the note-book. 

There was no trace of curiosity in his questioning; 
but he flashed interest and animation. 

“I’m not concerned, of course, with a patient’s 
personal affairs, but this has a medical bearing— 
part of the history of the case—and I want it in 
the record. Way you’ve put on weight is something, 
but this—psychic—come-back is significant; might 
say corking! Now as to the time—since you came 
here, of course, to the Inn?” 

“No. At the hospital.” 

“Porch acquaintance, eh? Fellow-patient?” 

“Nurse, Doctor Hampden.” 

“ ‘Nurse?’ O, I don’t like that—don’t like it. 
Ridiculous!” And he closed the note-book. 

“That’s a waste—sheer waste—of scarce ma¬ 
terial. Happens right along, too. Take a girl— 
promising girl—teach and train her for three years 
—give her lectures and clinics and cases to practise 
on—and she’s hardly out of blue-gingham before 
some fool patient comes along and shakes orange- 
blossoms at her.” 


3o8 the convalescents 

It hasn’t gone as far as that, Cartell assured him: 
never will—‘not one chance in a hundred,’ he quoted, 
for the orange-blossoms; he’d be quite content if 
she’d accept rosemary—for remembrance, pansies— 
for thoughts, and occasionally her favorite marsh¬ 
mallows. So one ‘fool patient,’ at least, knew where 
to draw the line at his folly—“if that has any bear¬ 
ing on the case.” 

“Yes, indeed!” And then, as if to himself: 

“Mind working clearly—no morbidness—nor de¬ 
lusions. . . . Keep it up!—And drop the tonic.— 
Don’t need it. Stick to the marshmallows and you’ll 
be all right—in a year.” 

“But why just a year?” 

“We don’t know at first hand. Have to take the 
nurses’ word for the—phenomenon. In their experi¬ 
ence, they say, it lasts one year.” 

“Frightfully definite, isn’t it?” 

“That seems to be the period required to com¬ 
plete the metabolism. But we’re not going to take 
any chances. Get away from here. Too near the 
danger zone.” 

“Where d’you advise me to go?” 

“Anywhere—that’s a change.” 

“Mountains?” 

“All right—if not in this latitude.” 

“How about a sea-voyage?” 

“Yes—real voyage; not just skirting around this 
coast.—Ever take the Panama trip?” 

“No. That is an idea!” 


THE CONVALESCENTS 309 

“And from there, maybe, up to Honolulu, if you 
care to.” 

Yes, he was sure he’d like that, but—“Not too 
far. Doctor?” 

“Not for the complete change you need. You’ll 
get it there—climate, scenery, people, ukuleles-” 

“Then, if nothing happens, I might perhaps go 
on to the Philippines?” 

“By all means. And when you’re that far, you 
might as well take in Japan.” 

“Keep on. Doctor, and you’ll have me in China.” 

“Why not? Another world for you! Avoid the 
beaten tracks of travel and you’ll forget there’s 
any such thing as hospitals, doctors or nurses.” 

Cartell could hardly thank him—nor conceal his 
delight: “I’ve always been keen for that Pacific 
trip—especially so of late; but I was afraid you 
might-” 

“No! Wonder I didn’t think of it before. When 
do you plan to start?” 

“Next month, unless you disapprove-” 

“No, no. Next week if you like. Sooner the bet¬ 
ter. I’ll have Miss Frewen, my secretary, look up 
the steamer date for you.” 

He gave some final injunctions, which Cartell 
promised to obey. Though it doesn’t seem to mat¬ 
ter, he said; the whole business, he’d come to think, 
was in Fate’s hands. “You believe that, don’t you, 
Doctor?” 

Yes, he did—within limits. And if you use 





THE CONVALESCENTS 


310 

ordinary common-sense, Fate will take care of you. 
But you mustn’t pester the Old Lady, and wear out 
her patience. She means to look out for you to 
the finish—’till your time comes, as they say; she’s 
fixed the how, when and where. But you mustn’t 
presume too far on that. She can’t be tagging at 
your heels all the time. Has other fish to fry. And 
if you will go running damn-fool chances, taking all 
sorts of silly, desperate risks just to try her out— 
see how far you can go with her—^you’ll bump up 
against some little microbe some day when she isn’t 
around- 

Coming home, that night, from the Circus— 
Doctor Switcher had warned them not to miss it, 
“best clown since George Fox”—he reminded Doc¬ 
tor Fenway of that case they had in “73”—man 
named Cartell. 

Yes, Fenway remembered: “Came through, 
didn’t he?” 

“Yes, and come-back. Talks of ocean-voyage.— 
All right?” 

“Guess so.—Where to?” 

“Says he’s going to cross the Pacific.” 

“Going some, isn’t he?” 

“Struck me so. Most surprising, I’d say.” 

“Yes, yes. Of course. Always is.—But I had a 
lot of faith in that case, somehow.” 

Hampden curbed his enjoyment to smiles, but not 



THE CONVALESCENTS 311 

easily; bit his stogie in two to choke it off, and hur¬ 
ried to ask: 

“That long ocean voyage—ten thousand miles, 
maybe.—What do you think?” 

“Can’t hurt—may help.—Married man?” 

“No,” Hampden laughed, “but seems to have 
gotten seriously interested in some one.” 

“Good! That’s sure to help.’^ 

“Yes, but—one of the nurses at B. M. H.” 

“H’m! Is it settled ?” 

“No, no. And he says no chance. But you never 
can tell—at B. M. H.” 

“Yes—we are unlucky, that way. Better get him 
away, quick.” 

“I’ve started him,” Hampden chuckled: “advised 
a change of climate immediately.” 

“Fine! We can’t waste nurses on well men. 
We’re losing two, next week—taken a job in the 
Orient—Miss Dalkeith and Miss—Miss—San¬ 
ders ?” 

“Not Savile?—Sandra Savile?” 

“Yes, that’s the girl. Mrs. Moncrieff’s prot^ee. 
—Going to a Children’s Hospital—at Huang 
Chau.” 

“What do you know about thatl’^ 

“Somewhere in China—all I know,” Fenway re¬ 
plied, literally. 

“Y—e—s”—Hampden mused. “Can you beat 
it!” 

“No sir,” said the great surgeon, recalling him- 


312 THE CONVALESCENTS 

self from that Huang Chau Hospital, “you can’t 
beat a good Circus for complete mental diversion.” 

A little further on old Doctor Switcher caught up 
with them. . . . ‘Yes, this was his third visit . . . 
that clown—most attractive case—going same way 
as George Fox—and Grimaldi, too. Strange thing 
about those fellows’ . . . 

The rest of the way home these three men of 
magic to whom science bares her inmost secrets 
talked, wonderingly, of the trained seals, the bare- 
back rider, the maroon-striped okapi, the iron-jawed 
lady, the pie-bald jumper—‘mighty rare with that 
color’!—the Cingalese knife-jugglers. . . . 


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